


Swarm & Handle

by julads



Series: Swarm & Handle [1]
Category: South Park
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1910s, Chicago (City), Drug Use, Hobos, M/M, Mental Illness, Train Hopping
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-11
Updated: 2016-05-10
Packaged: 2017-12-19 05:06:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 86,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/879800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/julads/pseuds/julads
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the spring of 1913, Kyle, fed up with his suffocating home life, runs away to hop trains across the country, where he befriends Swarm, a true seasoned vagrant.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The note Kyle left on the table in the foyer was remarkably crude and untidy – even three hours after dinner, his hand was still shaking enough to make writing difficult. He told his parents not to look for him, to absolutely not call the police, and that he'd be home soon. It felt satisfyingly devious to make such a promise, for if he did come home at all, it certainly wouldn't be any time before September, three months from now, when he was supposed to go to college. He signed the note with his name in staunch, capital letters, not his usual neat script.

He crept out the kitchen door, snuck around the perimeter of the house, and darted across the well-trimmed lawn, making a point to trudge right through his mother's award-winning magnolias. With trembling fingers, he unlocked the wrought-iron front gate, careful to not let it shut closed behind him with its typical menacing clang. As he scurried into the night through his quiet upscale neighborhood, focused on avoiding the blaring lights of the lampposts, he resolved he wouldn't look back at his house, not even once. The sooner he got away from these imposing mansions and the prosperous people who lived in them, elite nobodies who he had the misfortune of having known his whole life, his own family included amongst them, the better.

He went up Lincoln and then down Belmont to Western Ave., where he caught the trolley just in time. After paying his fare, he found a seat towards the front of the nearly empty car, that way he could make a hasty exit. He peered out his window, squinting and trying to make out the few stars in the cloudy nighttime sky. He was looking forward to seeing real stars out on the road, clear ones that actually twinkled. For the adventurer, the stars were his guide. Damn, should he have brought his pocket astronomy book? No, part of being on the road meant packing light. Thank goodness he'd remembered to bring his compass however, he thought, patting the pocket on his suede satchel to make sure it was still in there.

Tomorrow morning, the maid would discover his note and timidly hand it over to his mother. She'd be furious at first, possibly even angrier than she had been earlier. Kyle's prediction was that his parents would call the police anyway, but he was certain he'd be out of the city by the time any real search efforts were coordinated. If all went as he hoped, sooner or later, he'd just be brandished another runaway. Over time, his parents would lamentingly acknowledge every grievance they had pitted against him, realize they had rashly neglected to consider his opinion on the decisions they nonchalantly made for his supposed betterment. When he came home – no, _if_ he came home, they'd apologize relentlessly, admit they'd been such uncaring, callous parents, and grudgingly, he would find it in his heart to forgive them.

The cables above the car hummed mechanically as the trolley sped towards the heart of the city, the loudest noise in the streets so late in the evening. On a Tuesday at almost midnight, even the bars were quiet. For Kyle, the silence was intolerable, painfully inappropriate for the beginning of an adventure: the world should be loud, vibrant, inundated with the clamor of strangers' shouts, the growling of gas-powered automobiles, all back dropped by the low reverb of Chicago's own voice. Tonight, Chicago was silent, like she was holding her breath, waiting to see if he would really go through with this. Sighing, Kyle unbuttoned the front pocket of his satchel and examined the compass. The needle couldn't seem to decide on a direction, mustn't be able catch up with the speed of the cable car, he decided, then tossed it back in his bag.

He got off at 37th Street, worrying, perhaps stupidly, that it would be too obvious if he got off at 43rd. As he walked down the street, not too fast but not too slow, a grating voice in his head, the one that always sounded vaguely like his mother's, reminded him that if he abandoned this foolish plan, he could head back home and no one would know the better. But the yards were already in sight, and besides, practicality and reason and being cautious and patient is what drove him to do this stupid, stupid thing anyway. Shaking his head, he said aloud, so as to convince himself wholly, that he was a man of the road now, a trailblazing adventurer.

For years, Kyle had criticized the fact that Corwith Yard had no fence. It was as if Chicago was _condoning_ this lifestyle, welcoming vagabonds into the city to come and go as it suited them. Now, of course, as he hurried to the tracks, he was grateful no one had ever listened to him and installed one. There was a chance a fence could have been the last deterrent to thwart his scheme and send him slinking back home, where life was unsatisfying and unsatisfactory. He crept between the boxcars, wandering without direction, beginning to wish running away hadn't been so impromptu. If he had had the time, he would have loitered around West Madison Street in hopes of meeting someone his age who seemed trustworthy and was willing to teach him the complexities of train hopping. The anti-tramp laws were not very stringently enforced, though it still unnerved Kyle to be breaking the law for the very first time in his seventeen years. He'd feel better if he were with someone else, at least.

Some long minutes later, he still hadn't come across a single boxcar with an open door, and the panic began to set in upon his nerves. The one thing he knew about trains and jumping them was that the boxcars were locked from the outside, so he didn't bother trying to pull open any already closed doors. He'd seen the occasional snippets in the paper detailing the macabre deaths of hobos who'd forgotten to stick a pebble or twig in the car door, then had it shut by a rail worker while the poor son of a bitch was sleeping, so he subsequently starved to death in the boxcar because he couldn't get the door open.

Relatively nearby, he heard heavy feet treading through the gravel, followed by a booming, authoritative voice. "Who's there?"

Then, he was struck with real terror, the kind that immobilizes the body, forces one's mind to confirm the reality of the circumstance, given how impossibly terrifying it is. _Move, move, damn you!_ his thoughts bellowed. He had to get the hell out of here, to run, to hide. It was a cop, it had to be a cop, he decided morbidly as he crawled under the nearest boxcar, his whole body shaking. Shit, what if he looked below the car? Oh but wait, he'd forgotten entirely about the rods that spanned the underside of each boxcar. If he could manage to crawl up and position himself across them, sandwiching his body between the rods and the car, he'd have a better chance of evading discovery. Grappling the iron bar running down the middle, he hoisted his weight up and over it with relative ease, though he scraped his neck against the rough underside of the boxcar. Thankfully, and just in time, he noticed his overstuffed satchel strewn forgotten on the track below, and he immediately snatched it up.

"Anybody over here?" he heard the cop shout again. He was very near now, and Kyle couldn't afford to breathe. If he got caught, he knew he'd pay gravely, though not with the meager legal repercussions for trying to catch a free ride: his mother would be livid, disgusted with him for maiming the Broflovski name, and characteristically, she'd be vocal about it, too, bombarding him with her condescending rambling spiels, obscure accusations and empty threats.

Yellow light darted over the gravel. The cop paused in his search, pointing the light at a low angle alongside the car behind Kyle's. All Kyle could see of him was his polished black shoes, illuminated by the jittery flash. The light shot just below the far left corner of Kyle's car, and he felt his muscles go rigid. He clutched the bar in an extreme death grip, fingers going numb. Gloriously, after only a few seconds, the cop didn't examine his car further. His shiny black shoes treaded away, leaving Kyle undiscovered, hidden by the night's blackness. Until he decreed enough time had passed that the cop wouldn't come back to make a more thorough investigation, Kyle only allowed himself to let out shallow, agitated breaths. He had to move, had to find an open boxcar, fast, before this train started moving. He wondered how long it had been since the cop left, feeling like it had been so long, but not long enough. To weave his body back through the rods, he struggled to shove himself forward enough to get his feet back onto the tracks.

Distantly, he heard a shrill whistle, then everything around him began to vibrate. No, goddamnit, wait, _wait!_ He wasn't ready; he had to get out of the rods first, had to find an open car. Unsympathetically, the heavy wheels began to rotate, though just barely, so maybe there was still time to get out safely. But he could get crushed, even _split in half,_ if he attempted to free himself from beneath the car now. Well, shit. Miserably, he rationalized that the train would have to stop eventually. He just wished he knew how long it'd be until the next stop, wherever that even was. Come to think of it, where the hell was this train even going? Maybe if he'd actually put some _thought_ into running away, he could have obtained information about freight schedules. As the wheels sped up, clicking deafeningly and much too close to his face, he blinked furiously, disgusted for being so quick to tears, and then resigned himself to surviving the next however many hours.

The first hour, or what he guessed was an hour, wasn't so bad, although his straining grip around the bars was beginning to make his hands feel like they weren't part of his body anymore, merely cumbersome weights attached to the ends of his arms. The train was speeding hellishly fast, and he tried not to think about what would happen if he fell through the rods. Eventually, the heavy clack of the wheels simmered into marginally-ignorable background noise and the strung up, manic feeling of apprehension dissipated, rendering his body limp with exhaustion. At home, his bed was fixed, ready to be slept in, and he groaned miserably imagining how good it'd feel to burrow beneath the airy, summer quilts. His arms and legs ached terribly. Beyond any doubt, he'd never felt so physically wretched, exhausted or uncomfortable in his whole life, not even the time two years ago when he'd been so ill with typhoid he had deliriously accepted his death as imminent. Was it worth it, surviving that brush with death only to end up running away, stowed beneath an old boxcar on its way to God-knows-where?

A pebble shot up from the tracks and hit him in the face – right by his eye, too, for fuck's sake. He made sure to keep his eyes closed from then on, though doing so made it harder to stay awake as the hours crept by. Pitifully, he thought about going home. Really though, that would be the worst way to accept defeat: by offering a grand, sickeningly opportune presentation to his family of how incapable he was at managing his life. He couldn't go back, wouldn't go back. He didn't want to have to pretend to care about copyright law and certainly didn't want to have to take Adina to Karlin's for lunch ever again.

As dawn approached, smothering the outlines of the faraway hills in a tentative gray, Kyle thought perhaps the train wasn't going quite as fast anymore, but he forbade himself from getting too hopeful. However, either he was dying again and the world itself was slowing down until he slipped into unconsciousness forever, or the train really _was_ going to stop soon. Now, the wheels were clearly turning slower and he studied the set at the far right of his car until he could count a whole second for them to make a rotation. He decided he'd remove himself from the bars the instant the train stopped at the station, wouldn't be an idiot and play it safe again, since it had sure done him a lot of good last time. The car jolted to a halt, and Kyle shook with its force, too weary to resist the velocity. Hopefully, this station had a town nearby, wasn't some outsource depot in the middle of nowhere. As he was trying to reestablish control of his cold, tired limbs, a shuddering slam thundered right above his head, freezing him in place, his left leg half-flopped below the back bar. _A person_ hopped down from _inside the car_ , planting himself about two feet ahead.

With his back to Kyle, the person – a man – lifted his arms far up over his head, spreading his half-gloved fingers wide. His hair, capped by a ragged knit hat as dirty as the rest of him, crawled all the way down to his shoulders in mangled yellow clumps. Realizing he was just a hobo, Kyle sighed deeply, regretting it instantly when the man stopped in his stretching routine, having evidently heard him. He turned around, noticing Kyle straightaway, and frowned. Kyle strained to keep his expression steady, unaffected, but he wanted to be sick with how foolish he had been to assume that this guy wasn't dangerous just because he was a hobo. But maybe a perplexed scowl was just this bum's default expression. He didn't really look too scary, especially not when his cracked lips eased into a smirk, partially exposing his teeth. They were about as yellow as his hair.

"Hey, Swarm!" he said, unnecessarily loud, for it seemed he was only speaking to someone still inside the boxcar. "Get a look at this kid! Musta been ridin' the rods the whole way here."

Kyle glared at the man, who was really more of a boy, likely only a few years older he was. His gut reaction was to unweave himself from the rods as fast as he could and get the hell away from these people, though as he struggled to do so, he wondered it that was the best plan of action. If they didn't want to kill him, maybe they could be an asset, teach him how to catch trains the right way. Standing up again was actually sort of hard, and Kyle awkwardly stumbled back against the boxcar. As he was stretching his limbs back into proper working function, he realized, embarrassedly, he was mimicking this idiot hobo, who was still beaming, like he was expecting Kyle to offer him a present or something. Kyle clenched his jaw and glowered warily at the hobo, trying to make himself look menacing. In the corner of his eye, a dark shape edged out from the open boxcar. Kyle immediately jerked to the right and in doing so, whacked his back with a weak _clunk_ against the side of the car. Sitting on the edge of the boxcar, the second hobo stared straight at him with an expression that was mostly just sleepy, or bored perhaps. This hobo appeared a bit less dirty-looking than the other one, but not substantially so. He had black hair of an appropriate length that wasn't all disgustingly clumped together, decently topped by one of those hats old men wore. Most glaringly, he had a patch covering his left eye, which made him look quite intimidating. Kyle swallowed hard, accepting it was probably too late now to make a run for it.

"He musta had a pretty good handle on them rods, dontcha think, eh, _Swaaarmy?_ " the blond guy chortled, wobbling a bit. Probably a drunk, Kyle thought, but he wanted to scream at him regardless, ask what the hell was so funny about the fact that he'd suffered all the way here while these two were living it up, sheltered, right above him.

"Guess so," the dark-haired hobo said, the one who must be Swarm. He casually hopped off the train, and Kyle, feeling that eye on him, stared at the ground, trying to decide what the hell he should do: see if these two tramps were decent enough to latch onto, or take his chances and start running. True, he was still shook up, re-acclimating himself with literally having his two feet on the ground and all, but neither of them seemed truly _antagonistic_ , and besides, they had to know the secrets of this vagabond lifestyle, its tricks of the trade, how to survive on the tracks and such. Tearing himself from his thoughts, Kyle noticed Swarm and the other hobo trudge over the gravel and scamper down the muddy slope, walking away from the tracks. Kyle felt like a bubble inside his chest popped, spilling sour regret over his entrails – yet another opportunity lost by taking too long to make a decision.

Swarm turned around and called out to him. "You coming to the stem?" he said as if this was a given and he didn't understand why Kyle wasn't following right behind them.

"Ah – yeah," Kyle answered, though he wasn't quite sure what the stem was. He knew he had to get off the tracks though, before anyone came to unload the cars. He tried to be cautious descending the hill, thinking he must look very ridiculous to these people, a prissy rich boy trying not to get his wool slacks dirty as he hobbled down the muddy slope. The blond hobo was still grinning dopily, muttering something about how Kyle had had a great handle on the rods or some inane bullshit like that.

"Our lil' Handle made it down the hill!" the blond hobo commended, then drew a cigarette from his mass of clumpy hair and brought it to his lips. He stuffed his whole hand in his hair and dug out a match book, ripping a match out and swiping it alight, then touched the flame to the tip of the cigarette.

"My name is _Kyle_ ," he said derisively, maintaining his distance as he trailed behind them into a grassy field.

"And mine's Kenny. But everyone calls me Hack. See, my hometown ain't too far from here," the hobo said, twisting around in mid-walk to offer Kyle his appallingly dirty hand. To be polite, he shook it limply, but the hobo clutched his hand heartily, grappling the handshake with his other, naturally equally dirty hand, in an overly intimate manner that was odd for a first meeting. What the hell was wrong with this drunken bastard, and what made him think it mattered to Kyle where his hometown was?

Swarm turned his head far back over his shoulder. "You a runaway?"

"Um." Kyle worried if revealing the truth was dangerous, but he couldn't think of precisely how it would be, so he relented and told the truth: "Yeah. Guess so."

His only response was a short "hm."

The three of them trudged hurriedly through the tall grass, cold and wet with dew, cutting into uneven patches of morning fog. Hack led the way, digging through the damp grass almost giddily, apparently very eager to get to the stem. Keeping up with these two was hard for Kyle, who was barely cognizant and certainly not the least bit energetic after such a rough night. He hadn't slept in how many hours now? He tried to count them, but his brain faltered in doing basic arithmetic.

Swarm yawned and scratched the back of his neck. "How long you been catching out?" he said, tilting his head back.

"Since last night," he responded, trying to sound casual, confident, which he understood was rather ironically idiotic the instant the words had left his mouth.

Swarm slowed his pace to walk next to Kyle. Hack clipped ahead of them, unconcerned that they were steadily falling behind. He hobbled backwards for a few steps and saluted Swarm jovially, who mimicked the gesture, but with a lot less enthusiasm.

"Never been on the road before today?" Swarm asked, his one eye regarding Kyle disbelievingly.

"Nope." He was beginning to feel mildly on edge again. He prayed Swarm wouldn't ask him _why_ he had run away, because not only did Kyle have no desire whatsoever to explain, he was also concerned he would come off as a pompous idiot for abandoning a life where he had everything: a nice house to live in, friends (well, _a_ friend) at school, plenty of food to eat, and books to read.

Thankfully, Swarm responded by offering a half-smile. "Well, you're welcome to come along with us. We'll pro'ly stick around here for a coupla days, then catch out to New Or'lins."

"Oh. Yes – I'd like that," Kyle said, accepting the invitation and instantly liking Swarm a whole lot. "Where are we, anyway?"

"Milan," Swarm answered. " _Tennessee_." He smiled genuinely this time, and his teeth weren't nearly as yellow or disgusting as Hack's, which was what probably induced Kyle to smile back. Kyle was still trying to process how incredibly _far_ he was from Chicago only a day into his journey. Illinois to Tennessee had to be at least four, maybe five hundred miles. Realizing he was still staring at Swarm as he deliberated the geography, studying his only eye – which was his preferred shade of blue: dark, oceanic, not the unremarkable pale variant blonds typically had – Kyle tore his gaze forward. Ahead, Hack was only a dark speck shooting down the road. The sun was steadily inching higher, glowing shyly behind a cluster of buildings that must be the town. Hopefully the stem was simply the part of town where hobos hung out, like West Madison Street in Chicago. If not, Kyle imagined it was a sprawling underground series of tunnels where tramps gambled and drank and did God knows what else.

"Almost there." Swarm pushed his fingers up under the patch to rub his socket. Kyle struggled to not appear as creeped out as he was. He sort of pitied Swarm for being so young and only having one eye – Kyle always imagined it was mostly the older hoboes who were missing limbs and body parts, like the ones he'd seen begging downtown.

Swarm was right, it wouldn't take much longer to make it to the town, even though they were walking leisurely now – and thank God for that. Kyle could feel his body was exhausted, his joints aching from use, but his mind was newly awake, anticipating what the stem would be like. Additionally, the late spring country air was invigorating: it tasted surreally fresh, even sweet, not at all like the city air he was used to.

"Don't think any place'll be open for a while, but if you got five cents, you can get a room in the lodging house. They got food there, too," Swarm explained, pointing to a building down the road. The town of Milan was still mostly asleep, only a paper boy unpacking a stack of papers at his street corner and an old hobo in an alley digging through the trash.

"Are you going to?" Kyle had to ask. Even though this was the smallest town he'd ever been to, if you could even call it a town (it was more like a village), he didn't want to lose track of Swarm.

"Nah, I'm not tired. Slept almost the whole way here. But I can show you where the house is, then I'm gonna sit outside the library and wait for it to open," he said. Regretfully, Kyle realized he must have looked distressed, because Swarm quickly continued, "Just come to the library – it's 'bout three blocks down – when you wake up and we can grab a square. Lunch, I mean. How long you think you're gonna sleep?"

"A hundred years," Kyle moaned, squeezing his eyes shut and clutching his satchel to his chest. Swarm snickered good-naturedly at his response, and comfortingly, Kyle was beginning to feel at ease around him. He had to admit he was pretty impressed with the library bit, too. "Maybe 'til one. Or two? Not too late, I hope," he answered seriously this time, digging his wallet out of his satchel. There were nickels in here somewhere, he remembered, leafing through the bills.

Shockingly, Swarm grabbed his hand, closing around it to shut the wallet. "Oh Jesus," he said. "You can't be letting people know you got this kinda money. You'll get rolled. _Robbed_."

Kyle simply said, "Oh," feeling like an idiot for not grasping such a necessary precaution himself. Shortly after dinner last night, he had rushed to the bank, arriving just before it closed, and took out a stupid amount of cash: his entire account in nineteen one dollar bills, ten nickels, and five dimes.

Swarm was still staring at him, his eye wide, like he wasn't sure he trusted Kyle to not get himself mugged. More covertly this time, Kyle extracted a few nickels, then stuffed his wallet deep in his front pant pocket. Wanting to erase his shame from being so oblivious, Kyle starting heading toward the lodging house again, concentrating on the fact he'd be able to sleep soon.

The lodging house was dingy and old, like all the other buildings in Milan, although it seemed clean enough. Also, it was easily the tallest building in town, being four stories tall. Kyle was going to keep his positive attitude alive – he had survived the first night on the run, after all, and now that he had a guide, things would be much easier from here on out. Nothing would be polished and new, but he had been expecting that. He could tough it out, he determined, kicking the luxurious memories of the last hotel he stayed in from his thoughts. Adventurers didn't need room service.

When they entered the lobby, the young woman at the front desk tugged her eyes from the paperback she was reading and looked at them like she was annoyed they were here.

"Can I get a room?" Kyle requested, careful not to let agitation creep into his voice.

"Single five cents, loft ten. How long you stayin'?" she asked.

"Oh, a loft then. And um, two days?" he responded tentatively, looking to Swarm for confirmation.

Nodding, Swarm said, "Yeah, 'least two."

Kyle placed four nickels on the dingy counter. The woman rummaged through a drawer in the desk and handed him the key to room 308.

"Breakfast in the kitchen from eight 'til ten," she stated flatly, already back to reading the book.

"I'll be heading over to library I s'pose. You want me to come knock on your door if it gets too late?" Swarm offered once they were in the hallway, away from the woman.

"If I don't show up by two, yes, that'd be fine. It's room three-oh-eight," Kyle replied, showing him the key.

"Welp, I'll be seein' ya," he said, stuffing his hands in his jacket and turning around.

"Bye." The door clattered shut behind him. From outside, Swarm offered a short wave, but Kyle was too slow to process the gesture, and by the time he managed to raise his hand in response, Swarm was already out of sight. Kyle tossed his satchel over his back and headed down the hall to the stairwell.

In his room, the clock on the wall read half past six. Admittedly, the word "loft" had sort of impressed him, but there was nothing impressive about this room: the maroon striped wallpaper was peeling in the corners and the furniture – a single chair between the curtained windows, a dresser, and the frames of the two beds – was very old, antique-like, but in subpar condition. He figured the only thing that qualified this room as a loft was the fact it had two beds, which was just a waste of ten cents, but it didn't really matter to Kyle. There was a porcelain pitcher in a bowl and a sponge on the dresser, and Kyle groaned, drawing the conclusion that there probably wasn't running water for bathing – the bathroom around the corner hadn't been a powder room; that had been the _only_ bathroom. At least there was that, though it was hard to be optimistic when he really wanted to shower.

He tossed his bag on the bed, pausing for a moment to tell himself they surely must wash the sheets between customers. From his satchel, he obtained one of the fresh bars of white soap he'd packed from home and washed his face with the pitcher water, rubbing it dry with his shirt, because he didn't trust the likes of that sponge. Looking in the mirror, which needed a good wipe-down, he wondered if his scrawny reflection seemed more adult-like than it had been yesterday. If it did, it was only because he was so tired, with dark bags under his eyes. He went back to the bed and changed into his red pajamas, thinking hobos probably didn't wear pajamas to bed, just slept in their ratty clothes, but this set felt good and he liked them, so he could just be a pajama-wearing hobo for all anyone dared to care. The mattress was not nearly as soft or comforting as his was at home, but Kyle fell asleep faster than he had in years, since elementary school maybe, he speculated, drifting off.

* * *

Someone was knocking on the door. For a terrifying split second, Kyle feared it was a cop, one from Chicago who'd come all the way to Tennessee to drag him home, but then he remembered Swarm, how he said he'd come and wake him up if he slept too late into the afternoon. Shit, it was almost quarter to four! He flung the door open just before Swarm was about to knock again, his curled fingers poised in mid-air.

"Sorry," Kyle said, hoping an apology wasn't too heavy-handed for the circumstance.

"What? No, uh – I'm sorry for wakin' you up," Swarm said. Then, his expression was rendered deeply, almost comically perplexed, and Kyle may have laughed if he didn't realize at once Swarm was trying to wrap his head around his crimson silk pajamas.

"Shit. I'll be ready in a minute," Kyle murmured, feeling his face get hot. Rudely, and without giving Swarm a chance to respond, Kyle shut the door. As he squashed the incriminating night clothes back into his bag, he resolved he'd open the door again coolly, unbothered, even though he really wanted to crawl under the bed and wallow in shame. His wool slacks and cotton dress shirt from last night felt acutely pre-worn, not at all the way clothes should feel when you first put them on. This opinion, in the same vein that pajamas were needed for sleeping, was the kind of prissy unhobo-like attitude that he needed to eradicate, and as quickly as possible. Once he was properly clothed, Kyle went to open the door again. Swarm was leaning against the wall, a book splayed open in his hand. He raised his head to study Kyle and the book's pages collapsed over his thumb.

"Alright. I'm good," Kyle declared, deliberating if he ought to apologize again, if only for those goddamn pajamas. He thought better of it and promptly turned around to lock the door.

"You hungry?" Swarm asked as they headed towards the stairwell.

Only then realizing how empty his stomach felt, Kyle admitted, "Ugh, yes. Starving."

"I don't really wanna deal with this kitchen here though," Swarm said, lowering his voice. "There's a pretty decent place nearby, anyway. Hack oughta be there soon, if he's not already." He inhaled deeply, almost tiredly, then closed his eye before suddenly flitting it open so wide his lashes grazed the skin under his brow.

Cutting the brief eye contact – it was too unexpected, too intimate – Kyle stared straight ahead, into the lobby, and said, "Sure, that's fine." If Swarm didn't want to, he certainly wasn't about to insist they stay and eat at the lodging house, even if Kyle wasn't enthusiastic about being around Hack again. Shooting an askance glance into the kitchen at the end of the opposite hallway, which appeared empty save an old hobo at the table, Kyle assumed they simply must have terrible food. Wherever they were going for dinner, he just hoped he would have the opportunity to slash some kosher rules. Getting excited about this reminded him of his parents, and he pictured them crying on the sofa in the parlor, holding each other, Kyle's note crumpled in his mother's trembling hands. His stomach lurched up towards his diaphragm, like he'd been punched from the inside his body. He rerouted his thoughts, replaying an actual scene from the parlor: his parents and Adina's parents on opposite sofas, refilling each other's wine glasses, spewing infuriating bullshit about how adorable it was that Kyle was so "sweetly awkward" around Adina. That was the night he chucked the jade paperweight his parents had given him as a souvenir from some place or another at his bedroom wall. He had to do some redecorating later to hide the conspicuous, angular dent.

It was still satisfactorily bright out, but the sun looked hot surrounded by dreary streaks of cloud, like it was already tired, more than ready to set, although there would still be a good five or so hours of daylight. The air was much warmer than what was typical for late May, instantly prompting Kyle to digest the incredulous fact that he was a couple hundred miles south of Chicago. And what a relief too! They'd never find him so many states away, even if his parents offered a fifty dollar reward and had the entire police force on the lookout. Feeling deviously chipper about this, he hopped down the steps of the lodging house onto the dusty afternoon street. En route to the restaurant, Swarm naturally leading the way, Kyle tried to be subtle about discerning the title of the book still hanging limply in his hand.

He figured, since he was curious enough, to just ask. "Say, what book is that?"

"Oh – it's _Five Dialogues_ ," he said, raising the slim, withered paperback.

"As in, Plato?" Kyle asked, hoping he didn't sound as surprised as he was. Somehow, he had expected all the books in the library of a town like Milan to be about herding cattle, or making pies from your own freshly-picked strawberries.

"Yup." Swarm slowed his pace, staring fixedly on the worn lettering on the cover. "I don't know a whole lot about philosophy, but I read just about anything I can get my hands on. I didn't make it too far with school, so I'm tryin' to compensate, I s'pose," he continued, trailing off.

"Well, that's good," Kyle appended, finding it the only appropriate response. Ashamedly, his education had always been something he had taken for granted, at times even angrily considered a _constraint_ securely fitted on him by his parents, who regularly boasted to his relatives what a fine lawyer he would make someday. On the rails, Kyle presumed, not having completed high school was probably typical. Truly, he was glad to discover Swarm valued learning as well, because although Kyle had at times hated school very much, he did enjoy learning.

They arrived at the restaurant, a dingy establishment with the words "Bix's Inn" in chipped paint on a sign chained to the edge of the awning. The tables inside were empty, some in the back with the chairs still flipped upside down on top of them. Kyle noticed Hack sitting cross-legged on a bar stool, a glass teetering nonchalantly in his grip. He was with somebody else, a guy with wispy black hair who looked like he wished he weren't there.

"Heya, look who came to see us, Pearly!" Hack shouted across the restaurant, shoving the other guy in the shoulder.

"Oh Jesus," Swarm muttered under his breath, squeezing the skin on the bridge of his nose between his dirty fingernails. Kyle wished he'd hurry up and fill him in on what the hell was going on.

"That's it. I told you if you called me that one more fucking time I was goin' back to work," he said, glaring daggers at Hack.

"Now, c'mon, you know there ain't no more dishes to wash. And dontcha wanna meet my new friend, Handle? Huh? _Craaaaaig_ ," Hack droned, pawing at Craig's shoulder.

"Fine," Craig grumbled, taking a long swig from his glass.

Hack motioned for Swarm and Kyle to come to the bar. Slumping his shoulders, Swarm gravitated to the stool next to Hack. Kyle slinked behind him, taking the seat to Swarm's right.

"They still got Irish turkey here?" Swarm asked.

"Yes, they still got Irish turkey here," Craig quipped in a bitter, mocking tone.

"Aw, Pear – _Craig_ ," Hack corrected himself, "don't be so mean to Swarmy."

Opportunely, the bartender appeared from the ratty curtain behind the bar. "Can I get you kids somethin'?"

"Irish turkey and a glass of ink, please," Swarm said.

"Same here," Kyle requested, since they had not been given menus. Irish turkey sounded delightful, and this kind of ink surely wasn't the type you filled pens with.

"Comin' right up," the bartender said, almost sarcastically.

"So, Swarm, looks like you found yerself a lamb," Craig alleged snidely once the bartender disappeared. Despite the fact he was still vastly unacquainted with hobo jargon, Kyle understood Craig was referring to him, and if he weren't still so frazzled with the unfamiliarity of his new life on the road, he would have said something, stuck up for himself. But then again, maybe not – Craig was scary looking, in a mean way, with sunken, smirking eyes and an overly sharp bone structure.

Sighing exhaustedly, though with a definite edge of irritation, Swarm said to Hack, "Why'd you bring this son of a bitch here?"

"Fuck you, Swarm," Craig said.

"Why can't we all just get along?" Hack sputtered, choking on the laughter trying to squeeze out from the back of his throat.

Swarm pressed his palm to his right eye, saying, "I'm gonna take my food when it comes and go eat outside." He eyed Kyle apologetically, as if to ask if he minded they leave.

"That's fine," Kyle said. Craig snickered. In an obvious and pathetic attempt to change the subject, Hack started rambling about Chicago, how lively and big its main stem was, and how he and Swarm had made a fair bit of cash up in "The Big Town," making cigars over the past few months. Actually, Kyle was intrigued by this, almost couldn't believe that Hack and Swarm had been in Chicago right along with him, at least for the past three weeks since Kyle had returned from prep school. He wondered if he'd ever unknowingly seen them before, although it was doubtful, since he didn't often venture far from the safety of his wealthy neighborhood.

Balancing two plates, the bartender returned, depositing them on the bar. It definitely wasn't turkey, Kyle realized, analyzing the steaming food. There was cabbage involved, but the meat was darker than any turkey he'd ever seen. Before Kyle could ask what it was, the bartender ducked behind the bar, making clanging noises, and then there was the sound of liquid being poured into a glass. He stood up again, placing a glass half full of something red – wine, Kyle guessed – next to each of their plates. Lifting the glass to sniff its contents, Kyle wasn't sure how he felt about his assumption being correct.

"Sir, we just had a change of plans and hafta head out now, so you got any paper plates we can have?" Swarm asked the bartender, who didn't look the least bit happy to hear his request.

"Plates, yeah, no cups though. Charge is a penny for each of ya, by the way," he said, heading behind the curtain again.

Amazingly, Swarm downed the entirety of the drink in two gulps. Kyle, understanding their hurry, and really not wanting to stick around Bix's goddamn Inn any longer, tried to do the same, despite his lack of experience in consuming alcoholic beverages. He managed to swallow the harsh, cheap-tasting liquid before the bartender returned with the plates. Thankfully, he didn't make a spectacle of himself, although he immediately felt incredibly dizzy upon setting the empty glass back down. It was a good thing he'd tossed those nickels in his pocket earlier so he wouldn't have to be exaggeratedly discrete about retrieving money from his wallet. The bartender took their money and returned Kyle four pennies worth of change. In sync, Kyle and Swarm flopped the cabbage-coated meat from the inn's dishware onto the paper plates, then practically bolted. Kyle wondered if Swarm felt as ridiculous as he did, hustling past Hack and Craig (who sniggered again), carrying food on paper plates, as if they were waiters at the restaurant. At least they were getting the hell out of there.

"I hate that fucker. He washes dishes at the lodging house, so I thought I was smart for goin' to Bix's to avoid him," Swarm griped in a low voice once they were a block away from the restaurant, their speed slowed to a more relaxed shuffle.

"What did he mean about me being your lamb?" Kyle asked, the question pooling from his mouth before he took the moment to consider if he ought to ask, or if he even wanted to know the answer.

"Oh Jesus, _that_. Hold on, let's get outta the stem first."

Out past the edge of town, they settled on a fallen log shallowly within a sparse cluster of woods. Swarm whacked a thick orange mushroom away, uprooting it, before sitting down right where it had been, apparently unbothered by potential remnants of fungi.

"Want a fork?" Swarm asked, whipping two out from his bag.

"Oh, um, yes. Thank you." Kyle wasn't sure why Swarm had forks, but he accepted one readily, relieved he wouldn't have to struggle to find a polite way of eating without utensils. Prodding at the mystery meat, Kyle convinced himself it was beef. It was actually really good, but this was likely largely due to the fact that he was extremely hungry. The meal not being kosher was absolutely another contributing factor.

Just as Kyle was telling himself not to eat too fast lest he get nauseous, Swarm stabbed his fork into his half-eaten dinner and exhaled sharply through his nose. "I guess you don't know much about bein' on the road yet. But, ah, there're some old tramps who take advantage of young kids, get them to beg for 'em, 'cuz they get more sympathy than the old 'bos. That's not the worst of what they make 'em do, but I don't really wanna get into the rest. Sometimes they call 'em 'wolves' and the kids 'lambs.' It's not something most of us want to think happens as much as it pro'ly does, but Craig's a sick son of a bitch who likes to make those kinda jokes."

Kyle wanted to go back and punch Craig in his bony snake face. Or more realistically, he wanted Swarm to go back and do it. Morbidly, he also wanted to know more about the decrepit brand of "wolf" hoboes. Instead, he swallowed his anger and curiosity with his last bite of dinner and asked, "How come he hates you so much?"

Swarm twisted the fork into the remaining chunk of his meat, its juice seeping out over the untouched cabbage. "Well, he used to catch out with us, and two summers ago we were down south and we got snared, y'know, arrested, and he was sore as hell about it – wouldn't let up that it was my fault, even though we both knew it was Hack's for being such a noisy drunk. But even before that he didn't like me much. Anyway, he said he was just gonna work for a little while, but it's been a year now and he's still here washing dishes. Hack was real mopey when he stopped ridin' with us, and I'm pretty sure he's tried to convince him to come back, but he hasn't budged. Not that I'm complaining."

"Sounds like a real ass," Kyle commented, distracted from his animosity towards Craig by how enchanted he was that Swarm was rather nonchalant about spending a night in jail. Kyle found himself consistently impressed by Swarm, who was a real, hardened vagabond, but also charmingly scholastic. Not to mention, he was decent-looking for a hobo, with healthy, clear skin and a clean-shaven face. If it weren't for the eye patch, he might even look boyish. Hell, give him a bath and one could probably call him handsome.

"Yeah," Swarm agreed half-heartedly.

Neither of them said anything for a while. Kyle wanted to ask Swarm a lot of things, like how long he'd been on the road, if he was a runaway too, and how he lost his eye, but he couldn't bring himself to verbalize such inquiries.

"Hey, Handle, or wait – you didn't like Hack's moniker for ya? You said your name was Kyle, right?" Swarm asked.

"It's fine I guess, but you can call me Kyle. If you want," he said, adding the last part quickly.

"Okay," Swarm said warmly. "I hope you don't mind me asking, but why'd you leave home?"

"Oh. Um," Kyle trailed off, wanting to answer properly, but not knowing where to start.

"No, it's alright, forget I asked. It's not really my business, anyway," Swarm interjected, mumbling.

Kyle shook his head. "I had a fight with my parents," he said, aware of how pathetic it sounded. "After I finish college, they want me to marry this girl. Well, I didn't know they wanted me to _marry_ her until yesterday. She's alright, I just don't care for her much, and I think she's kind of an idiot, so that's what I told them. They weren't too happy to hear it." He wanted to elaborate, to detail his mother's seething rampage, if only to make running away over a family argument sound sufficiently credible.

"You were goin' to _college_?" Swarm exclaimed, astonished.

"Y-yes. But that was the other thing – after undergrad, I had to go to law school, so I could someday take over my father's firm. But I just – I don't _want_ to." How ridiculous, how petty he must sound. If Swarm didn't think he was an idiot for running away for such frivolous reasons, he must believe he was crazy, a complete fruitcake.

"I guess it musta been pretty bad for you to wanna run away. You don't wanna go home, do ya?" Swarm asked, laughing a little, though waveringly, punctured with hesitation.

"No, not – anytime soon, anyway."

Swarm set his plate on the log, empty now save for the stained cabbage, and shoved himself off the log to sit on the ground. "That's good for me, 'cuz I like you a whole helluva lot more than Craig. It's been a while since me and Hack caught out with anybody else." Swarm pulled a dingy tin case from his canvas bag and snapped it open, removing a cigarette.

"Oh shit, you want one?" he asked, stopping himself from stashing the case back in his bag, twisting around to face Kyle.

"I'm good, thanks." Hopefully, eventually, he'd become a seasoned tramp, a sharply self-aware vagrant who spent his days hopping over the rooftops of speeding boxcars, his nights huddled around a campfire, guzzling cheap rum and smoking cigarettes with his hobo pals. It was only day one though, and he'd managed to down that glass of acid wine successfully, so he didn't want to push his luck with smoking too.

In one swift stroke, Swarm swiped a match ablaze to light the cigarette. Then, he shook the match, extinguishing it, and flicked it carelessly into the brush.

"How long have you been hopping trains?" Kyle inquired, trusting this was appropriate to ask since he had told Swarm why he ran away.

Exhaling a bright white cloud of smoke, Swarm replied, "Almost four years now, I think. Time sure does fly."

"Four years! How old are you?" Four years ago, Kyle had been secretly crying himself to sleep, terrified of having to move to upstate New York to attend prep school all by himself. It was impossible Swarm was much older than him, and four years ago, _he'd_ been toughing it out on the open road.

"Eighteen, nineteen in October. You?"

"Eighteen. Um. Tomorrow," he said, having forgotten in the wake of recent, life-changing events that tomorrow was the twenty sixth of May, his birthday. Guiltily, he remembered straightaway the bag of fresh cherries in the kitchen at home, waiting to be dried and whipped into filling for the hamantaschen his mother made for his birthday ever year.

"Tomorrow!" Swarm exclaimed, shooting his head over his shoulder.

"Yup."

"We should celebrate tonight then, since it's possible we're heading out tomorrow night. But I'll have to ask Hack next time we run into him. So anyway, you wanna get plastered?"

"Yeah," Kyle said, grinning broadly despite himself. "That sounds pretty good."

On the way back to town, Kyle didn't feel quite like himself, though not in a bad way. At prep school, he knew there were boys who snuck out of the dorms to go bar-hopping in town, and as much as he hated them, hated seeing them race across the lawn below his window, snickering and laughing in not-so-hushed voices, he could at least admit to himself he very badly wanted to be amongst them. After Eric was expelled for rewiring the school's phone lines for eavesdropping purposes, Kyle's only remaining friend, if he could call him as much, was a self-righteous British kid named Gregory, who could have easily scaled the social hierarchy and left Kyle behind if he weren't such a snob. Now here Kyle was in Milan, Tennessee, a whole different world, about to divulge in those booze-induced shenanigans he once dreamed of with an amicable guy who had said he _liked_ him, didn't just tolerate him like he was sure Gregory did. This was all just putting him a bit out of his element, but he was enjoying himself immensely.

The stem was a lot livelier now: a cluster of men outside of Bix's speaking so loudly to each other Kyle wasn't sure if they were just chatting or having an argument, an old hobo huddled against a mailbox playing a harmonica, a kid much younger than himself scampering by, who was, bewilderingly, smoking a cigarette.

"We can get real wine or whiskey or whatever you want at the drugstore in the nice part of town. It's not too far, and they got donuts there too," Swarm explained.

"Wine, then?" Whiskey sounded too extreme.

"Sure," Swarm agreed. "It's _your_ birthday, after all."

At the drugstore's, they got the biggest bottle for the cheapest price, a three cent white wine labeled as a tonic which also claimed to "invigorate the blood and promote healthy living." Swarm hardly argued when Kyle resolved to pay for it, though he was adamant about purchasing the donuts.

"Are you going to stay in the lodging house tonight?" Kyle inquired as they skirted through the stem, back to the quiet fields surrounding the town. The sky was just beginning to dim, muting the outside world in a vague, sleepy purple.

"Nah. Pro'ly just gonna sleep outside since it oughta be warm enough. This far south, anyway," Swarm responded after swallowing a mouthful of plain glazed donut. A flake stuck to his upper lip. Wetly, he licked it up.

"If you want," Kyle began carefully, "you can stay in my room, since it has two beds."

"Oh? You don't mind?" His brow shot up, disappearing behind his long, sloppy bangs.

Kyle was about to say he wouldn't have offered if he minded, but he feared that mind sound a bit fresh, so he said, "No, of course not."

"Well, that's awfully kind of you," he said demurely, as if he were complimenting some good deed Kyle had done.

Shrugging, Kyle supplied, "I want you to," though it left his mouth sounding more like a question.

"Alright, then. Thank you," he said, his lips quivering into a small smile. Dry, uncertain laughter cracked in his throat.

They returned to same patch of woods and sat with their backs against the log, passing the bottle back and forth, steadily emptying it as the sky settled into an array of deep oranges and soft pinks. Kyle was feeling quite drunk, giddy and progressively comfortable, thinking himself a true rail tramp for being so completely drunk on a Wednesday night. He was glad too that the wine from the drugstore was more palatable, even increasingly delectable, than the bitter, watered-down variety from the restaurant bar.

"Did you run away too?" Kyle inquired once the mood settled, having caught his breath from howling over Swarm's tale of the time Craig got so sunburnt last summer he looked like a newborn piglet.

"Sorta," Swarm explained, cradling the bottle in his lap. "My dad mighta been too drunk to notice I'd left though. After my mom died, my sister left and got married, so it was just me and him. He stopped caring about the farm, then stopped caring about everything else, so. I just left." He ground his cigarette into the earth. Burning flecks of tobacco popped into the air and floated down haphazardly.

Somehow, Kyle had acquired the naïve presumption that Swarm had ran away to scour the country seeking adventure. Based on no actual truth, he'd developed this theory Swarm had been an orphan, too free to be burdened by the demands of family and relatives, belonging only to the open road. The somber reality was hardly comparable to such stupidly poetic assumptions. At a loss for what to say, but compelled to say something, he murmured, "I'm sorry."

"Aw, nah, c'mon, don't be sad about something like that," Swarm said, leaning over to grip Kyle's shoulder, his tone definitely amused. Suddenly serious, he added, "And, I hope this don't sound too stupid, but one of the reasons I've always been fine with being a road kid is 'cuz I know my mom's up there – a dolphin in the sky."

"Umm. What?" Until then, Kyle really had been sympathetically on key with Swarm's speech.

"The constellation. Delphinus," Swarm explained, his hand still heavy and overly warm on Kyle's shoulder, which was distracting, and a little invasive, but he didn't hate it, not really. Swarm looked dramatically concerned, like he was very worried Kyle didn't know his astronomy.

"Oh, hah, I see. I know that one, yes." He had only read about it in his pocket astronomy book though, never having bothered to investigate the little constellation in the real night sky.

They left the empty bottle in the woods and Kyle didn't even care. Staggering through the fresh dark on the way back to the lodging house, he was beginning to feel sleepy again, the combination of shuffling to and from town all day and the alcohol alike taking a toll on his stamina. Swarm had his head tilted way back, focusing on the sky.

"She's easier to see later in the summer," he said.

Kyle looked up too, blearily trying to identify some constellations, but the sheer brightness of the stars was too compelling for him to bother connecting them, although wait, yes, over there was the Big Dipper, hanging idly in the panorama.

The stem was empty again, the only evidence of life people's silhouettes, tall in the windows, hazy against the yellow glow of electric lights. There was no whirring of streetcar cables, no automobiles bustling angrily through the street. Milan said goodnight when the sky went dark. Through the night, only the tiny flicker of the candle-lit lamppost would intrude the quiet. At the front desk of the lodging house, the woman from yesterday was asleep, and her face, half obscured by her hair spilling out from the failing up do, was pressed to an open book.

Sleepily, they struggled up the three flights of steps to the loft, Swarm giggling drunkenly to himself as he occasionally brushed up against Kyle. "I'm so glad you're gonna be catchin' out with us. It's been gettin' real dull, just me and Hack," he said, slurring the end of each word to the beginning of the next.

"I dunno what the hell I would've done if I didn't find you guys. I would've been absolutely fucked. _Fucked!_ " Kyle exclaimed loudly, both of them snickering when someone pounded on the wall from inside his room, not having any of it.

Kyle fiddled with the lock and the instant it clicked open, they burst into the room, falling towards the beds. Without even kicking off his boots, Swarm landed face down on the bed nearest the door.

"This wasn't your bed, was it?" he asked, his voice muffled by the pillow.

"Nope," Kyle said, discarding his boots on the way to his bed. He crawled beneath the sheets, pulling the thin quilt up over his shoulder. Moaning, Swarm twisted to face him, the eye-patch slightly displaced. Jerking is arm free, he repositioned it immediately.

Whispering, Kyle asked, "What happened to your eye?"

"Had an accident with a spoon," Swarm said jokingly, which was a disappointment, though guiltily, Kyle figured he probably shouldn't have asked. It was rude. In his drunken state, he panicked, not wanting Swarm to think he was an inconsiderate heathen of a city-slicker for having the indecency to ask such a thing.

"Sorry. That's a lie. I'll tell you the real story some other time, since it's a long one," he added, his words breaking halfway with an unenergetic yawn. He scratched the corner of his jaw, then tossed his arm over the side of the bed, letting it hang stilly.

"Alright."

Opening his eye drowsily, Swarm murmured with blissed-out fatigue, "Hey, Happy Birthday."

"Ha, thank you," Kyle said, digging his head into the pillow, knowing he would be asleep very soon. His eyelids drooped shut and he let the steady strum of Swarm's breathing lull him into sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

Kyle's first thought upon waking was that he must have slept through his alarm and now he was going to be late to class. He was about to yell at Gregory for not waking him up until he cracked an eye open and realized, alarmingly, he wasn't in his dorm room at Everly's, and the boy curled up on the other bed wasn't his pretentious ass of a roommate either, it was Swarm. Yesterday – or no, wait, the day before now, he ran away from home. The realization made him suddenly aware of a horrendous pounding enslaving his whole head. The wine. This must be what a hangover feels like. Fucking hell. Thank God he thought to pack that half bottle of aspirin. He was still too sleepy to really get up yet, but the throbbing was so bothersome he dragged himself over the side of the bed to dig through his satchel for the bottle, swallowing two chalky pills dry. He threw himself back on the bed.

Swarm was drooling on his pillow, his brow furrowed deeply and twitching occasionally. A bad dream, maybe. What types of nightmares did hobos have? Horrible accidents like getting decapitated by a train or having an extremity dismembered by a boxcar door, he theorized. Kyle shivered, staring at Swarm's vaguely distressed expression, studying that eye patch. Maybe there _had_ been a spoon involved – as in, his eye had gotten infected somehow, swelled to an incredible size, and he had no choice but to pluck it out with an old soup spoon. Or – and was this more realistic? – he got shot, right in the face. But wouldn't that have killed him? Obviously, Jesus Christ. As badly as Kyle ached to know the real reason, he ordered himself to not ask again.

At nine thirty, when he couldn't tolerate the crusty feeling of his clothes anymore, Kyle crawled out of bed, went down the hall to use the restroom, and deliberated taking an – ugh – _sponge bath_ back in the room. Except Swarm was in there, and even if he was still sleeping, he could wake up at any given moment, his first sight of the day being Kyle's gimpy, stark-naked body. That would be a disaster, but he was really desperate for some sense cleanliness. Afterward, he'd be able to put on his one other, unsoiled set of clothes. And now that he was craving it, the notion of feeling clean again was too tantalizing for him to simply forget, so once he got back in the room, he got the bar of soap from his satchel, poured the pitcher of water into the bowl, and shed his clothes, eyes glued to Swarm the whole time, watching for signs of rousing. Even though Swarm had turned and was unfortunately facing Kyle now, he seemed to still be sleeping. Kyle squeezed the sponge in the water, then rubbed the soap over it to accumulate some suds. He started wiping himself down as quickly and as quietly as possible. Funnily, he felt as nervous washing himself with Swarm sleeping only feet away as he had when he was hiding from the cop the other night. Now he just had to rinse the sponge, get all this soap off and –

Swarm cracked his eye open.

Kyle froze. He flung his arm down to cover himself with the sponge, inadvertently squeezing it tight. Loud drops of water splashed on the floor. Confusedly, Swarm stared for a moment, then his eye snapped all the way open.

"Um. Sorry," Swarm mumbled, immediately rolling onto his side to face the other way.

Despite the fact he was coated in cool water, Kyle felt his body burning up. His head spun, the hangover reaffirming itself. He let out a long, shaky breath and closed his eyes, concentrating on willing himself to not pass out. Eventually, he washed off the soapy residue from his skin, sort of wanting to cry. Hobos weren't prudes. He dug out a clean towel from one of the armoire's cabinets and rubbed himself dry, really regretting trying to get cleaned up in the first place. At the very least, he should have used the sink in the bathroom. The shame and lingering hangover made it impossible to enjoy how comforting it was to put on his clean tweed pants and matching waistcoat.

Humiliated, he murmured, "I'm ah – finished, now."

Slowly, Swarm rolled back. "So, uh." He blinked, then swallowed. "You hungry? Craig's most likely working now since it's breakfast hours, but I can run down and grab some bread or something and bring it back up for us."

"Or I can, since I'm already dressed," Kyle offered, though the prospect of facing Craig alone made him nervous.

" _Or_ we both can," Swarm said, smiling a little. He hoisted himself up, flinging his legs over the side of the bed, and put his face in his hands, yawning. He got up and staggered past Kyle into the hall. From behind the closed door, Kyle listened to his footsteps until he heard the distant _click_ of the bathroom door. He went to his bed, tossing himself face-down over the twisted sheets.

His life was a never-ending series of avoidable embarrassments. This was primarily because he was an easily embarrassed person. One way or another, he had to quit being such a prude. Undressing in front of Gregory used to bother him, and it had bothered him that it bothered him. Mostly, he hated how thin he was, but he had other frustrations with his body, too, like his hair, and the birthmark below his collarbone, which was ridiculously shaped exactly like the state of Florida. Or, as Eric used to say, like "some sorta freak dong."

Undressing around others supplied an _extrinsic_ variant of humiliation too. This type differed from typical (intrinsic) embarrassment, the mere existence of parts of himself he was displeased with. Extrinsic embarrassment relied in part on comparisons to others' qualities, but it was denser than that, and those qualities seemed to be _superimposed_ on him. That was what made it embarrassment, and not just envy. So, getting caught naked in the middle of a goddamn sponge bath detailed the intrinsic type, extrinsic type, _and_ the element of surprise, which was never healthy.

It occurred to him that when Swarm came back, he might want to bathe as well. Kyle would have to leave, of course, but he let himself fashion an imaginary situation in which Swarm was about to strip down and just as Kyle was heading for the door, he'd ask where he was going. So, he would stay instead, lounging on the bed and nonchalantly flipping through a book or magazine while Swarm dragged that same sponge over his tanner skin. If by some chance this hypothetical scenario ever manifested, Kyle could not allow himself to stay, for he would never be able to maintain the appropriate level of indifference: he'd stare, and intently enough to make Swarm aware of it, _or_ to distract himself from doing so and avoid such awkwardness, he'd attempt discussion. The latter could be more damning, for he'd certainly fumble over the fine details of Socrates' dialogue with Euthyphro, preoccupied with analyzing the muscle definition of Swarm's arms. He wanted to make a complete assessment of his body, if only to make himself hate his own more. He had to stop this – by spending so much time running in circles with his thoughts he was making himself unnecessarily nervous, not to mention self-conscious. While ruminating this, he'd absentmindedly tugged a hangnail way too far down with his teeth and now it was bleeding.

Swarm came back cupping something in his left palm. As it turned out, it was liquid soap from the bathroom. "I'm gonna shave first, if that's alright?"

"Y-yes, of course," Kyle said dazedly, flung back into the reality where Swarm was smearing liquid soap all over his face.

Swarm crouched down to rifle through his bag, standing back up to face the armoire once he dug out a modern shaving razor. "We need to find Hack at one point today," he said, peeling the razor across his skin. "It's about another six hours to New Or'lins. I'm getting tired of the city, though. Felt like I was in Chicago forever. I'd like to get out to Texas before too long."

"What's in Texas?"

"Wheat fields. I know Hack don't seem it, but he's a real spike pitcher. I was getting antsy making cigars all winter, so I'm looking forward to working the fields again. Texas in the summer sure is hot though." He swished the razor in the porcelain bowl.

"What do you, ah, do exactly?" Kyle asked.

"In the fields?"

"Yeah."

Before answering, Swarm wiped his face clean with the same sponge that had been pressed to Kyle's cock only minutes ago. "We just shock the grain as the binder cuts it. Not much to it. Or, you might be able to get a threshing job, since most farms down there don't got combines. Point is, there's always a job in the fields if you're looking."

"I'd like to give it a shot," Kyle said, his voice betraying him by wavering a bit.

"S'not really so bad." Swarm threw his arm over his shoulder to scratch his back. "So, you ready?"

"Yeah."

* * *

Naturally, Craig had to be working. The only other person in the kitchen was a fidgety kid cleaning out a coffee urn.

"Hey, Tweek, looks like you're gonna have to brew another pot," Craig grumbled. "Goddamn you two."

"What?" Swarm said flatly.

Craig turned back around to the sink, dunking his hands in the soapy water. "I was just thinking how disappointed I was I didn't get a chance to scrape Swarm's headlights off our fine china. But anyway, now that you're here, tell Tweek what you want."

"We're not planning on stayin' – "

"Then why'd you come?" Craig interrupted.

"Sh-should I make another pot or not!?" Tweek spat out.

"We don't even want coffee!" Swarm said. "Well, wait, did you want coffee, Handle?"

"Oh, no," Kyle said. Although masked by the clang of silverware against dishes, Craig definitely sniggered.

Swarm cleared his throat. "You got _bread_ or something?"

With a sudsy butter knife, Craig gestured to the box labeled "Bread" on the counter to his left.

Swarm went around the table to the counter, regarding Craig warily as he opened the breadbox. "So, ah. I'm gonna be taking this," he said, a loaf clasped in his hand.

"Be my guest," Craig said insincerely, still pointing the knife.

Swarm stared at the knife, then at Craig, squinting at him incredulously. Shaking his head, he turned around and walked past Kyle to exit the kitchen, flicking his head back to see if he was following.

"Shit. Pro'ly shoulda asked him if he's seen Hack," Swarm said, breaking the loaf of bread into halves and spilling crumbs down onto the steps. Kyle took his half, biting into it immediately. It was stale, but he was hungry.

"Sorry I called you Handle back there. It's just that most 'bos use a moniker anyway, and well, I didn't think you'd want those two shmucks knowing your real name," Swarm said once they were in their room again. He sat down with his back to the side of his bed and went back to eating.

Joining him on the floor, Kyle said, "No, it's fine. Actually, thank you, then, for that. Um. Can I ask you what your real name is? It isn't actually Swarm, is it?"

"Ha, no." He laughed shallowly. "It's Stan. Well, Stan _ley_ , but I just went by Stan."

"Stan," Kyle repeated absently. It was easier to say than Swarm and softer, cleaner-sounding too, one swift simple syllable instead of a laborious mixture of consonants.

Swarm stopped chewing. "Wow."

"What?"

"I just haven't heard anyone say my name in a long time. It's like – hmm. Dusting off something old."

"Is that bad?" Kyle asked.

"No. I think I've missed it, being called that. Hey," he said, propping his arm up on the edge of the bed, his elbow very nearly grazing Kyle's ear, "you can call me Stan if you want, since I'm calling you Kyle. But just make sure it's just when we're alone, okay?"

"Okay," Kyle said, his voice almost a whisper.

They collected their bags and went down to the lobby to check out. Even though it was only ten o'clock, it was already very warm outside, the air dry and still. They wandered the stem and easily found Hack outside the library.

"Did they kick you out again?" Stan asked.

"Yup," Hack said, beaming, as if he was proud of this.

Stan sighed tiredly. "They don't want you to just sit there and sleep. At least get a big book and hide behind it if you're gonna do that. 'Sides, you're making us _all_ look bad."

"Yeah, yeah. So we catchin' out tonight or what?"

"That's the plan. I don't wanna be in New Or'lins too long though," Stan said.

Hack frowned. He opened his mouth as if to object, but he glanced at Kyle and closed it. "A'ight, we'll see. We'll see," he muttered, grumbling.

They spent the rest of the day killing time around town with Hack. The hours crawled. Kyle was anxious to get out of Milan, but he knew they'd have to wait until it was dark, when it was safe enough to catch a train without being noticed. The three of them went to Bix's again, during the dinner rush this time, and it seemed like every hobo in the whole town was there. They got gump and growlers – chicken and beer – and spent a long time there even after they finished eating, Stan and Hack talking about their winter in Chicago. Stan had attended a semester at the Hobo College, where they gave free lectures on politics, law, and rhetoric, among other subjects, all of which were actually of very substantial academic merit. Kyle was aware the makeshift school held debates with the University of Chicago, a team of hobos versus the university team, and regretfully, he had laughed at that when he first read about it in the paper last year, but Stan was both quite versed and well-read; he could have made an admirable opponent for those college brats if he had been on the team. He was more partial to the literature lectures though, from the sound of it. For the most part, Kyle only listened, sipping his second can of beer and periodically looking out the window to gauge how dark it was.

"Welp," Hack said, snuffing his cigarette out in the ashtray, "I'm gonna go say g'bye to Pearly before we leave."

Kyle was grateful for the few minutes alone with Stan while they waited outside the lodging house for Hack to say goodbye to Craig.

"It's nice it's warm again," Stan commented, stepping back to lean up against the building.

"Yeah. Those Chicago winters can be rough. We got a lot more snow up in New York though."

"New York?"

"Um. Near Syracuse. Where I went to prep school," Kyle explained, mumbling. He regretted bringing up New York. He was trying to erase his history of privilege, not highlight it.

"Oh, I see" was all Stan said.

The front door creaked open and Hack reappeared, carrying a bag full of bagels. "Look what Pearly gave us, m'boys!" he exclaimed.

Stan stared at the bagels. "For free?"

"'Course for free. He's my friend," Hack replied, looking wounded.

"How nice of him," Stan said. "Let's get going."

It was pitch black out now, so it was more troublesome trekking through the fields than it had been early the other morning. But even in the dark, Hack and Stan still seemed to know the way.

"Can't wait to get myself a nice sales lady," Hack said loudly.

Stan groaned. "Can we please not talk about that?"

Hack spun around and hobbled backwards. "Swarm," he said reproachfully, "there ain't _nothin' wrong_ with fuckin' whores." Kyle had to admit he was a bit taken aback by the unabashed lewdness.

"Does it really not bother you they're all on hop?"

Murmuring to himself, Hack turned back around. "You're no fun, Swarm."

They approached the tracks very far down in front of the station building, settling in the shadows of some trees relatively close to the railway. Kyle was less apprehensive about catching a train than he had been the other night, but he was still a bit jumpy, even despite the booze, shooting his head in the direction of every small noise in the night. _Animals, just animals,_ he told himself. "How long do you usually have to wait?" he asked.

"Eh, depends. One oughta be here soon," Stan said. Not much later, the distinct but indistinguishable whistle of a train sounded in the distance.

"Hope they load 'er up quick," Hack muttered.

The train eased to a stop in front of the station. There was some distant shouting and screeching noises, but it was too far away to see what was going on. The train inched forward as each boxcar was loaded up. Eventually, it progressed far enough down the tracks that the head car was precisely in front of them. They sat motionless, silent, watching from the woods.

They waited a little while longer, until they faced the sixth car in the train's sequence, when Hack said, "Let's go find an empty." Surprisingly, he and Stan made a dash out of the woods, and in breaking into a jog to catch up with them, Kyle realized their hurry: in order to get on the train while it wasn't moving, they only had as much time as it took for one car to be loaded up. They stopped to catch their breath at the base of the hill ascending the railway. Hack was the first to stumble up to the tracks, his drunkenness clear with his repeated slippage. Stan scaled the hill far more seamlessly. As Kyle made his way up the hill, he graciously accepted Stan's outstretched hand, noting his strength in how easily he was able to pull him up.

"What if we can't find an open one?" Kyle said in a low voice.

Hack turned to gape at him. "Huh? They ain't locked." He fiddled with the door to the box car, gently shoving it open with Stan's help. Kyle couldn't believe he had thought the car doors were locked from the outside, too. That didn't even make any goddamn sense. The day before yesterday could've gone a lot smoother if he'd taken a second to _think._

"How much room in this one?" Stan whispered.

Hack climbed up into the car, disappearing into the darkness until he flicked a match ablaze. "Looks pretty good. Just a coupla stacks of boxes back in the corner. Get a rock or somethin' down there so we can wedge it into the door."

Kyle crouched down to run his fingers over the gravel, searching blindly for an adequately sized rock. Stan did the same, and when their fingers brushed over each other, Kyle immediately drew his hand to his chest, taken off guard by the incidental touch.

"This one'll do," Stan said, getting up again and crawling into the boxcar where Hack stood, looking ominous with his bearded face lit up by the match.

"You comin'?" Hack rasped.

Shakily, Kyle hoisted himself up into the car too. Hack shook out the match and flung it outside, taking the rock from Stan and ramming it into the corner of the door frame. He and Stan gripped the door and carefully pulled it shut until it halted at the rock, leaving a thin strip of hazy night visible from inside.

"Boxes are over to the left," Hack said. So, all three of them went to the other side and sat down, their backs to the wall. Kyle wanted to sleep, but he didn't know how he'd be able to. Both the walls and floor were very hard wood. He clutched his satchel, wishing he could be in his pajamas. At least he could use his bag as a pillow. And this south, it was warm at night, too, about seventy degrees or so. Though as much as he was trying to remain optimistic, he was definitely on edge. The train was still starting and stopping in about twenty minute intervals to load up freight, but it would start for real soon. What if they checked the cars again before leaving the station? No, that would be impractical. But still. He inched closer to Stan, their shoulders just touching. Kyle prayed this was acceptable. Hopefully, Stan would just think it was an accident, or that he wanted to put some space between himself and Hack – it sounded like he was guzzling from his flask again.

"You tired?" Stan said so quietly it was unlikely Hack could hear.

"Sorta. Are you?"

"Yeah. Fucking exhausted."

The train's whistle cut the quiet that followed. Below the floor, Kyle could feel the wheels beginning to turn, making the whole car tremble as they sped up. Now that they were on their way, they were safe. No one would find them as long as the train was moving. Hack got up and strolled around the cabin, which was disconcerting, for it was hard to determine where he was exactly. Kyle willfully relaxed his shoulders, staring at the shred of vague moonlight allocated by the rock in the door. At once, things felt unrealistic. Here he was, sitting in a dark boxcar with two hobos he'd met just the other day, slightly inebriated from the first beer he'd ever drank in his life, and on the way to New Orleans, to top it all off. What would his mother think! Well, she'd be furious, of course, he thought smugly. Most likely, she _was_ quite angry with him at the moment, but probably sad, too. It was hard to accept that, but he knew it was true. However, if his parents were _too_ sad – non-functional and spending their days weeping – that'd be their own fault. In the note, he did say he'd be back. He would go home eventually, even if it wasn't in time for college. He wouldn't just leave forever like that. As his parents' only child, he couldn't be that cruel.

The cumbersome _thud_ of something hitting the floor tore Kyle from his daydreaming. "Ow, _owww_ ," Hack moaned.

"You a little blotto tonight, Hack?" Stan implored wryly.

"Swarm, Swarm, _Swarm._ You know how it is. _You_ know. I just get so – fed up," he said so morosely in comparison to his usual comical tone it was painful to hear.

"Yeah pal, I know, I'm sorry. Just try and get some sleep, alright?" Stan said.

Hack murmured something incomprehensible. Though just barely, the outline of his body was visible in the opposite corner. Eventually, his ragged breathing quieted and it seemed he passed out.

Stan shifted a little, slumping down against the wall. He straightened his legs across the floor.

"So… What's New Orleans like?" Kyle asked.

"Helluva lot smaller than Chicago, for one thing. Dunno if I'd call the stem in New Or'lins a true bunkerino though. It's more like – rows and rows of whorehouses. Course there's a whole bunch of those in Chicago, too, but in New Or'lins it's more, I dunno, built around it? In Storyville, anyway. You can't turn a corner without seeing a burlesque bar or a brothel. But the lodging house we usually go to has a bath, at least."

"Thank God," Kyle said. Then, he remembered the sponge incident from earlier and he felt his face get hot, the heat prickling down his neck.

"If I'm remembering right, think it's six or seven cents for a regular room at the place we flop at, so me and Hack split the cost and share, even though he spends most of his time – Well. You know."

"Oh. Right," Kyle mumbled. "You – Um, do you ever go to those places?" Mostly he was worried about feeling obligated to come along if Stan expressed interest in going, in spite of his previously expressed disapproval. Maybe there were more decent establishments where the women were not all doped up.

Without missing a beat, Stan said, "Oh, no. Well. I did go once because Hack and Craig talked me into it. But it's depressing, having to pay a girl to sleep with her. Might sound a bit strange, but that was why I couldn't do it. It felt all wrong. It makes me sad too, thinking that's what they gotta do to eat, y'know?"

"Ah, yeah. And I don't think it's strange. I probably couldn't do it either."

Stan murmured a sound of agreement. "Anyway, I'm gonna hit the hay." Raising his neck, he squashed his bag behind him to serve as a pillow.

"I better too."

"G'night, Kyle," Stan said, his tone airier.

"'Night."

The darkness of the car willed Kyle to sleep, but he had extreme difficulty in finding any sort of agreeable position on the hard floor. He envied Stan and Hack for being able to fall asleep so easily, though he knew it must largely be because they were accustomed to dozing off just about anywhere. Since he was constantly rearranging himself in vain attempts to get comfortable, Kyle had distanced himself a bit from Stan so as to not wake him. After a while, he gave up, too frustrated to reposition himself again, even though lying curled up on his side made his shoulder ache. He wished he could have brought a blanket, but it would have taken up most of the space in his satchel. He tried to relax his body enough to dupe it into sleeping and to clear his mind of thoughts. As usual, doing so had the reverse effect, and he started thinking about the conversation with Stan.

In all frankness, Kyle did not think about women much. His puberty had been late, and he presumed that eventually he would think of them with the same hyper-sexualized passion that Gregory did, as evidenced by the film advert of Mary Pickford he kept in the drawer of his nightstand. The most damning contradiction to this theory was that he was freshly eighteen and hadn't gotten any taller in over a year. Thus, he'd been spending a lot of time lately wondering if his lack of interest in women was permanent, not merely latent. Either he would be a lifelong bachelor or he really _was_ sexually inverted, which also provided a rationale for his extrinsic embarrassment affliction.

Reading Plato's _Symposium_ last year was his sole reason for speculating that there was something gravely wrong with him. Sometimes he wished he had never touched that book, because it had sparked a horrible, secret obsession: he then read everything about sexual inversion he could get his hands on, even going so far as to hide library books. The reason this obsession was so horrible was because it made him _feel_ horrible: the lighter, romantics reads would leave him feeling incredibly lonely, and the weighty, scientific ones would leave him feeling fundamentally broken.

Right now, if he didn't start thinking about something else immediately, he'd start feeling bad again, so he counted sheep. It was rather cliché, and sometimes he would get into the hundreds before he actually began to drift off, but it sort of helped, at least until the sheep reminded him of Craig's lamb comment, so he had to come up with a different animal. He settled on cats.

* * *

He was being shaken. "Hey. Hey wake up. Train's stopped," a voice said – Stan's. His body stiff and aching, Kyle tried to sit up. The crack in the door allowed a strip of dim gray light to weakly illuminate the car, but it was still hard to see much.

"Are we here?" he asked.

"Yeah. I'm thinking we oughta help unload the freight. You feeling up to it?"

The only thing he was feeling up for was going back to sleep. He slumped back down on the floor when the train started up again, groaning when it jolted to a halt a few seconds later. "Just the stuff in this car?"

"Huh? Well, no. There's nothing much _in_ this one," Stan responded, laughing weakly.

"Oh, right." He forced himself to sit up again.

"Me and Hack like to help unload sometimes because it's like paying for the fare, in a way. Let's just forget it today though, since you seem awful tired. Maybe next time."

"Okay. Sorry."

Stan patted his shoulder and said, "No worries." He stood up and stepped away. "Hack, you up? We're here. Let's get the door open."

"A'ighty," Hack said, yawning through the word. He and Stan ripped the door open, and Kyle was a little surprised to see a sleepy urban landscape spread out beyond the train yard. For some reason, he'd been expecting to be greeted by the slow hills at the edge of the Appalachians. He had to remind himself they were hundreds of miles down the line yet again. This was the loud, cultural city of New Orleans, a town wedged into the real American South, he thought, then realized that was a line he'd remembered from some terrible book he'd read once. Such cheesiness was memorable, he figured, feeling a little crazy and out of it with how sleepy he was. He grabbed his bag and carefully got down from the car. Hack led the way, skirting through the lot and weaving between boxcars until they reached the street.

"I want a bed," Hack groaned miserably. He pulled out a crumpled pack of cigarettes from his coat pocket and handed one to Stan, who accepted, and to Kyle, who declined.

"Christ, me too," Stan said, lighting the cigarette. "I'm still pretty beat. Guess we oughta get a loft again, for the three of us."

"Whaddya mean 'again'? You got a loft in Milan? For just the two of ya?" Hack asked.

"Well, Handle got a loft, ah, accidentally?" he said, looking to Kyle tersely. "So he had an extra bed, and he figured there was no point in letting it go to waste."

"Huh." Hack scratched his beard. "I see. So we splittin' it three ways? How much is that?"

"Dunno. We always get a regular room."

"Oh, yeah."

Stan slowed his pace a bit to walk at Kyle's side, putting them a few steps behind Hack. Very weary from such unsatisfactory sleep, Kyle felt detached from his body as he trudged forward, his legs creaking with each deliberate step. If he were feeling more energetic, he would have been taking in as much of this stranger city as he could, but his fatigue was rendering him indifferent. Anyway, a city was a city, and besides the occasional palm tree, the only thing glaringly different was some of the architecture: less industrial looking, more heavy curves, lots of white paint. Some nice mansions with big patios.

"How much farther is it?" Kyle asked Stan, hoping it didn't come across as whiny.

"Another mile or so," he said, taking a final drag from the cigarette and squashing it under his boot.

Kyle shut his eyes, envisioning the comfort of a bed. "So this place has rooms with three beds?"

"Hm? I don't think so. Lofts got two, like in Milan."

"Wait, so one of us is will have to share then," Kyle said.

"Um. Yeah? Oh, you want your own bed? That's fine by me. I'll just sleep with Hack."

"N-no, that's – Not if you don't want to," he stammered.

Stan stared blankly. "What?"

Kyle tried to piece together an explanation. "Well, Hack is kind of, uh. _Dirty_ ," he offered warily, hoping Stan would not be offended on his behalf. But Hack really _was_ filthy, and he probably smelled too, not that Kyle had ever gotten close enough to catch a whiff of him.

At first, Stan just chuckled incredulously, then his laughter deepened into a loud, booming noise.

Hack turned back to them. "What's so funny?"

"Nothing, nothing at all," Stan sputtered, still laughing.

"If you say so." Hack shook his head and spun back around.

In a low voice, Stan said, "Yeah, I wouldn't say Hack's the cleanest of 'bos. I gotta tell that fucker to take a bath while we're here, especially considering the sorts of places he's gonna be going." He shuddered.

After a long while of walking on the same street, they turned for the first time, onto Tulane Avenue, according to the bent street sign at the corner. Almost suddenly, the buildings became less well-kept and the streets more littered with trash. They made a final turn, onto Lasalle Street, and Hack pointed ahead to a red brick building coming up on the right. It looked quite decent, and the way the rising sun was twinkling behind it convinced Kyle it was a gift from God.

The lobby was dark though, eerie even, with well-cultivated cobwebs thick and white in the corners of the ceiling. Glumly, Kyle told himself not to expect much of the room. A loft cost twelve cents a night, so they paid eight cents apiece to stay for the next two days, though Hack told the elderly man at the front desk they'd probably be staying three, if not four days, and they'd pay later. Stan seemed distinctly adverse to this, and he eyed Hack sternly, though his glaring went unnoticed by the intended party.

"So, we gonna draw straws or somethin' to see who gets a bed to himself?" Hack said on their way up the steps.

"Nah. You can have it," Stan said.

Raising an eyebrow, Hack replied, "Huh? Well, a'ight, then. If you say so."

The room was worse than the one in Milan. Just upon setting foot inside, Kyle could tell it was incredibly dusty. There was an uneven piece of cardboard actually nailed to the wall, and he didn't want to think about what was behind it. Right now, what mattered most was that the beds looked neat and laundered, ready to be slept in.

Hack shoved off his boots and collapsed onto the bed by the window. "Aww, yeah. This is great," he said, spreading his arms out over the quilt.

Kyle unlaced his boots, hurrying to get into bed first so he could spare himself the embarrassment of having to wedge his body next to Stan's. It was clearly going to be uncomfortable: both beds were twin-sized and could hardly allocate two people, so it would be almost impossible to keep his body from touching parts of Stan's. However, in a strange, secret way, he was also oddly giddy about sharing a bed with him. Burrowing under the quilt and sheets, he shook that possibly lewd notion from his head and resolved to consider sharing a bed solely for what it was: a means to save money. He curled up as far to the right of the bed as was comfortable and deliberately shut his eyes, listening carefully to the shuffling sounds Stan was making nearby. The door clicked, and at first Kyle thought Stan might be going somewhere, but then he realized he was just locking it; he'd forgotten to do so himself in his haste to get in bed first. It occurred to Kyle he was holding his breath, for whatever reason. He exhaled, concentrating on his breathing, his heartbeat, Stan's soft footsteps approaching. Stan raised the quilt, climbing into the little bed himself, his legs bumping up against Kyle's as he tried to arrange himself beneath the sheets.

"You asleep already?" Stan whispered once he'd laid his head down on the pillow.

"No, not yet," Kyle replied, keeping his eyes shut – he could tell Stan's face was very close, so close he thought he could feel the whispery puffs of his breath on his forehead. He heard him swallow hard, and wondered if their closeness was making him nervous too.

"Well, ah. 'Night."

"'Night," Kyle echoed.

The bed was by far a more agreeable place to sleep than the boxcar floor, but Kyle was used to endlessly changing positions until he found the best one, and sharing a bed made him loath to move about. Just once, he allowed himself to roll over, facing away from Stan, and he hoped he wouldn't take it personally, although it _was_ in fact somewhat personal, for he wasn't able to relax knowing Stan's face was right in front of his. He clutched the quilt to his chest, sniffing in vain for the scent of any familiar laundry detergent. The bedding smelled clean at least, but he couldn't identify a discernible brand. He fell asleep thinking about the airy, crisp scent of Ivory soap instead of counting sheep or cats or any other animal.

When he woke up, everything around him was the precise level of warm that bordered upon uncomfortable. Blearily, he recognized he was huddled up into Stan's chest. On a mental level, this completely shook him, but physically, he was not alarmed. He ought to have moved right then and there, but he was still sleepy, and besides, how much farther away could he have even gotten in this bed? If he were more honest with himself, he might be able to admit he even _liked_ the feeling of Stan's arm draped across his side, limply holding him in place. Practically, it did not make much sense _why_ he should like such a thing, and instead of getting introspective about it, he came up with the abstract nonsense-conclusion that the human race was simply wired to seek out intimacy. Yes, that sounded biological enough to be credible, because living out some crackpot modern application of pederasty was certainly neither credible nor intelligent nor any other good, wholesome thing.

He lay there, perfectly still, turning his head every few moments to suck in a big gulp of air; it was stuffy in the small space allocated for him around Stan's body, but pleasant regardless, a safe feeling that reminded him of sitting in front of the fire when he was cooped up in his room at Everly's during a particularly bad snowfall. When Stan woke up, he'd have to pretend he was still asleep, for surely he'd think it absurd he hadn't at least untangled himself from the weight of his arm. In the meantime, Kyle squirmed closer, but then his thigh brushed up against something unambiguously _hard_ , and realizing what he was, he jerked back in a panic, then immediately got out of the bed. Standing at the foot of the bed, he studied Stan's face to see if extracting himself so suddenly had woken him up. Didn't look like it. He got lucky.

Hack was gone, which was also a relief. Kyle wondered if he had seen the arrangement he and Stan were in and thought anything of it, but he determined to be callous about it, because given the fact Hack and Stan often split the cost of a room and shared a bed, Stan must have unconsciously cuddled him, too, at some point.

The little bell alarm clock on the armoire read almost noon, and Kyle thought about waking Stan up, but then he remembered there was a bath down the hall, and God, did he ever want to take a bath. Stan looked so peaceful sleeping, anyway. Kyle grabbed his satchel and headed to the bathroom, hoping nobody would be in there, and that nobody would come banging at the door while he was in the tub.

So long as he managed to ignore the weird stains in the tub, the bath was exquisite, at least until he looked around the tiny bathroom and realized there weren't any towels. Regardless, he spent a long time soaking, reluctant to get out and try to figure out how to dry himself off. And anyway, the water was an ideal temperature – the exact definition of "warm," which was perfect because for one, the lodging house was not air conditioned, and two, it was already midday, so the bathroom itself was edging on uncomfortably hot. Cold baths disgusted him, so he relished the few-notches-above-lukewarm water.

He thought of how he had brushed up against Stan in the bed, and alarmingly, he started to get hard himself. He told himself to ignore it. Feeling compelled to jerk off to the idea of another boy's erection was so damningly inverted – by far the most explicitly unnatural compulsion he'd ever had. The head of his cock was peeking out of the water in the most mocking way, and then again, he hadn't properly touched himself in days. The privacy of the bath presented an ideal opportunity, and it would be kind of a shame to pass it up. He resolved to clear his thoughts, shoving anything to do with Stan out of his mind, and gripped himself loosely, hoping maybe he wouldn't be interested in working himself to completion. However, he quickly got into it, even running his other hand over the back of his thigh, which he occasionally added to the routine for the hell of it. He was going to melt from the pleasure, the exertion, the modest heat of the water, the steam clouding the room. Carelessly, he let a moan escape from his lips when he came.

Immediately afterward, he climbed out of the tub. For a makeshift towel, he used his pajamas, which was sad, and also not very effective. He cracked the foggy window, letting the hot Louisiana air waft in, then sat on the edge of the tub until he was completely dry. He stared at the mirror as it slowly got less foggy. Once it was shiny and reflective again, he decided it was about time to get dressed. Carrying his damp pajamas, he went back out into the hall, where he was stunned to see Stan sitting cross-legged on the floor, his back to the perpendicular corridor, reading a book. There was a folded towel in his lap.

"St – Swarm," Kyle said, wanting to smack himself for almost saying his real name. The hallway wasn't exactly a private place, even if no one else was around.

"H'lo," he said, closing the book and resting it on the towel. "I figured you were in there. I'm gonna take a bath, too. Wanted to wait out here and make sure nobody got the tub before me."

"Oh. Uh, sorry I was in there for so long. Where did you get that towel, by the way?"

"Front desk. You didn't get one?" he asked, eyeing the pajamas, which were blotched a deeper red in spots.

Lamentingly, Kyle stared at the towel. "I didn't know they were down there."

"I shoulda told ya, sorry."

"No, no, it's alright. I'll be in the room then," Kyle said when Stan stood up and moved toward the bathroom. On the way back to their room, he prayed there weren't any strands of his conspicuous curly hair left sticking to the tub. There was no showerhead, so he neglected to rinse it out.

He draped his wet pajamas over the single chair in the corner of the room, sort of glad now that the lodging house wasn't air conditioned, for at least they'd dry sooner. The warm air was not comfortable at all though, especially after the sauna-like heat of the bathroom. He thought of his favorite pair of linen pants hanging in his closet at home, wishing he was in them now instead of these tweed ones. At the moment, the best he could do was roll up his sleeves and undo a couple buttons. In doing so, he paced the floor, recalling at once the horrific possibility Stan had heard the airy gasp he'd let slip while he was jerking off in the tub. At home, he always made sure to turn on the bathroom ceiling fan to mask any sound, just in case someone was out in the hall. The bathroom here didn't have a fan, and, stupidly, he had forgotten to bite his lip to muffle that damning vocalization. He hadn't at all been expecting Stan to be waiting outside, only three yards away at most from where he had been shamelessly _pleasuring_ himself in the tub. That was really the most embarrassing thing, the proximity, since he did rather doubt Stan had heard him. Even if he had, how likely was it that Stan had assumed the truth? Highly unlikely, Kyle convinced himself, for he was getting sick of all of this extrinsic embarrassment lately. On the other hand, telling himself to entirely disregard plausible things to salvage his psyche must be some type of self-deceptive mental gymnastics.

Still ruminating this, he heard the door open, and Stan came in, toweling the side of his head. "I think Hack took those bagels with him. So, wanna get some grub?" he asked.

Downstairs in the kitchen, they had toast, a cup of coffee each, and some rolled oats leftover from breakfast. Then, they went back upstairs to get their dirty clothes and dropped them off at the front desk, where they paid the receptionist a penny each for laundry service. They had no place to go, but they left anyway to wander the streets. Storyville was a humorlessly inappropriate name for such an unkempt part of the city. It served as a prime example for the types of neighborhoods Kyle's mother had warned him about. There was a general sense of both actual and moral uncleanliness about the whole area. Even more apparent in the afternoon daylight was how markedly many of the buildings were decaying – it was curious that some were still standing at all. One of the nicer ones had a fancy sign next to the door saying "French House," and thinking it was a sort of novelty shop, Kyle almost suggested they stop in, until he saw a woman in the window sucking her thumb. She was bobbing her head up and down so ardently that he first concluded she must be mentally deficient. When she pulled back and licked her thumb with the entirety of her tongue, it struck him there was a definite quality of vulgarity to the scene, and he realized it was a whorehouse. He walked faster.

"God, fuck this place," Stan said, glancing over at the house.

Three more blocks down the street, they found themselves facing the Mississippi. Kyle was sweating, his cotton dress shirt glued to his back, but as they treaded onto the rocky shore, the river seemed to offer a cool, though very weak, breeze. The sun reflected upon the crests of waves in the dark river water, shining so white-hot it hurt to look at. They sat down on the rocks, side-by-side, quietly staring at the water. Stan lit a cigarette. A steamboat coming upstream would pass them soon. Typical summer boredom. Funny it could happen even on an adventure. Absently, Kyle picked at his cuticles.

"I think Hack feels like a third wheel lately," Stan said once the boat went by.

Frowning, Kyle replied, "But he's barely around."

"See, that's what makes me think so – he feels he's intruding, so he goes off somewhere. I know he spent the whole time in Milan trying to get Craig to come with us again, and I kinda feel like a jackass for it, but I'm sure as hell glad he couldn't convince him. I think that was one of the reasons why he was so fucked up last night."

"But wait, if you three caught out for a while, wasn't someone a third wheel then?"

Stan turned in Kyle's direction, looking not at him, but at some point in the distance. He half-smiled. "I guess it was me."

"Then maybe he ought to have a turn," Kyle retorted. Stan laughed a little. "What?"

"Hah, nothing. I suppose you're right though, and it's not like we're telling him to go get lost or anything."

"Yeah, exactly."

Stan lay down, his back over the white stones, squinting up at the sky. His bangs were sticking in clumps to his forehead. The first two buttons of his shirt were undone and the lapel flapped methodically with the breeze, exposing and then hiding his collar bone, slick and shiny with sweat. Looking at his skin made Kyle feel even hotter, and he eyed the river, half-wanting to jump in. Instead, he lay down, too, covering his eyes with his arm and trying in vain to think about the cold winters up in New York.

"I worry about him," Stan said. "Hell, I worry about everyone. I worry about my dad. I've only been back to Montana once, but I didn't have the nerve to go see him. I just – I hope he's still alive. Do you think your parents will miss you?"

"Probably. I bet they have the whole police force out looking for me."

"What?" Stan rasped in a crazy, panicked tone.

Kyle rolled his arm off his face to see Stan sitting up, looking down at him fixedly with that one eye. "Well, I mean – I'm just guessing. It's not like they'll ever find me _here_ , so I'm not too concerned." Stan did not look allayed. Kyle sat up and placed his hand on his shoulder, sensing the dampness of his skin through the cotton. "If they did call the police, the search would be called off after just a couple days since they wouldn't come up with anything. I left at night. Nobody saw me." This was not entirely true, for everyone on that streetcar must have seen him. But it was true enough, and he had been wise in getting off a few blocks away from the train yard, so it's not as if anyone could have known for sure he was catching out, least of all that he was all the way down in New Orleans now.

The worry in Stan's face dissipated somewhat, making him look exhausted. "Okay. If you say so."

For much too long, a terrible silence hung between them. Finally, Stan spoke up, saying he was thirsty. As they walked back to the street, he seemed to be in deep thought, and Kyle sourly regretted that comment he just _had to make_. It was possible a police search hadn't even been organized. Unlikely, but possible. He did understand Stan's alarm though, but the chance really was small that they'd be able to track him this far from home. Additionally, its likelihood was rendered almost obsolete since they were moving every couple of days.

But he'd heard things about how hobos were treated by the police. It wasn't so much the petty law breaking, but the contempt that law enforcement had for them, a loathing similarly shared by "proper people", such as his parents. Remorsefully, Kyle had shared that sentiment once. Later, he romanticized this lifestyle, and now, he was acquainted with the less fantastical reality. He didn't want to be a liability. He didn't want to make Stan's life more difficult, especially when he'd been so hospitable. What a way to repay him having a cop hot on their tails would be.

They stopped at a crummy bar and downed two glasses of ice water each. Their lunch had not been very substantial, and it was somehow nearly five, too, so they got a booth in the far back corner and had a more filling meal of beef stew, followed by cheap whiskey, and then more whiskey, which Kyle insisted on paying for because Stan's mood seemed to elevate which each swig he took from the glass. Stan prodded him about his school life, wanting to know the sorts of classes he had taken and what books he'd read. Speaking about the curriculum at Everly's got sidetracked once the topic of Eric Cartman came up, and Kyle found himself elaborating the series of vile pranks he had executed across campus. Stan listened with rapt attention, supplying an incredulous "Jesus Christ" where appropriate. Similarly, he could not believe Eric was expelled for something as innocent as tampering with the school's phone lines when he had taken a number of anonymous shits on the desks of teachers he hated and sewed a second head onto the principal's dog.

As the evening went on, the bar filled up with hoards of people talking so loudly over each other they could no longer make out what the other was saying. " _I said_ , let's bust this joint," Stan shouted over the table.

So, thoroughly inebriated at this point, they paid the tab and dug their way through the crowd, squeezing between men with horrible slicked back hair and women adorned with fuzzy shawls and costume jewelry. When they finally managed to get out the door, they paused for a moment in front of the building, slightly out of breath from the ordeal and from sheer drunken giddiness. Their eyes met and Stan grinned smartly, still breathing hard. Smiling wider, he suddenly burst into a dash, running straight down the middle of the street. Kyle bolted after him, feeling rejuvenated in a goofy sort of way, like he had burst from the seams of some lingering doubt.

Running sloppily, Stan looked over his shoulder, his eye glinting in the last light of the day. "You coming?"

Too out of breath to answer, Kyle narrowed his eyes, trying to look dangerous, and forced his legs to sprint faster. He was making increasing leeway on Stan, at least until he was thrown off when he turned into an alley. Only a few feet behind him now, Kyle sped down the alley, carefully avoiding a broken bottle. He was just about caught up when Stan seemed to run even faster, deviously glancing back again. Back on a real street, the lodging house appeared plainly, and even though Kyle thought he was going to die, he maintained his speed, because Stan was slowing down a bit as he got closer to the lodging house. Kyle caught the receptionist's scowl when he grabbed the door right before it shut behind Stan, who was now making his way down the hall.

By the time Kyle made it to the steps, he was close enough to reach out and grab Stan's shoulder, but he evaded the grip and staggered freely up to the second floor. Right after Stan flung the door to their room open, he spun around, dodging Kyle's attempting to tackle him. Kyle nearly stumbled over, but feeling almost animalistic from the alcohol and adrenaline, he tried to grab Stan again. Stan dived under his grappling arms, clutching Kyle's midsection and pulling him down. Exhaustedly, they wrestled on the floor, and Stan, being bigger, sturdier, did not struggle in pinning Kyle down. If Kyle weren't so completely plastered and drained from running all the way here, he would have tried to free himself from Stan's grip. He was going to tell him to at least get the hell off him when Stan leaned back, his expression oddly intrigued, curious, no longer really playful.

"W-what?" Kyle asked between pants.

Stan crawled off him and sat down cross-legged, still staring at him with the same funny expression. Laughing softly in the back of his throat, he said, "Christ, I must be _really_ drunk."

"So am I." In fact, Kyle was so drunk that he was on the verge of passing out. However, he would not allow himself to fall asleep on the floor when there was a perfectly good bed two feet away. For some leverage in getting up, he grasped Stan's shoulder, then went over to shut the door. "Oh, shit. Did we forget to lock the door when we left this morning?" he asked as he turned the lock.

"Huh," Stan trailed off, looking up with his mouth half-open. "No, no," he said, pointing his finger absently, "I remember you locked it. Unless they forgot to lock it up again when they came to drop off the laundry, it musta been Hack."

Kyle rolled his eyes, although it didn't really matter that the door was unlocked all day because they hadn't left anything in the room. Except, wait! His pajamas! Oh, thank God, they were still draped over the chair though. But how sad, too, since he really wanted to wear them, and they must be completely dry now. He moved around Stan and threw himself across the bed, eyeing the bedclothes bitterly. "I wanna put those fuckers on," he muttered.

"What?" Stan asked, drawling out the vowel. He got up and draped himself over the bed in a similar fashion, his shoulder pressed snugly to Kyle's.

"My pajamas."

"Do it. If I had pajamas, I'd wear 'em."

Kyle huffed. "Well now I _can't_ wear them, because I'd feel bad."

"Ha, _what?_ " Stan said with dazed incredulity.

"If you want, you can wear them. If they fit."

"I can't. I'd feel bad," Stan replied in a slightly mocking tone, rubbing his shoulder into Kyle's.

"You could wear half and I could wear half," Kyle suggested.

So that's what they did. Kyle made Stan look away while he shucked off his pants and crawled into the pajama bottoms. When he turned around Stan was shirtless. He accepted the top once Kyle unbuttoned it and slid his arms into the sleeves, but he couldn't refasten the buttons over his broad chest.

"This is great," Stan said, running his palms down the fabric. "Thank you."

"Yeah, anytime," Kyle replied, dragging his eyes away from Stan's chest.

They crawled under the sheets of the bed, neglecting the possibility of sleeping separately, because what if Hack came back in the middle of the night? Kyle was not concerned that his arm was so close to Stan's naked chest he could almost feel the warmth, nor that their knees were touching, and he fell asleep like that, comforted by the anchoring of Stan's proximity as his head threatened to begin spinning once he closed his eyes.


	3. Chapter 3

Kyle awoke to the smell of cigarette smoke. When he opened his eyes, someone he'd never seen before was sitting on the chair on the other side of the room, staring at him from behind a cloud of smoke he'd just exhaled. Kyle panicked. "Who the fuck are _you?!_ "

The expression on his dirt-caked face hardened, making him look like an animal. He said nothing.

"St- Swarm, Swarm, wake up," Kyle said, nudging him, keeping his eyes fixed on the man. Flicking the ash from his cigarette, the man got up from the chair and moved to the right side of the other bed, where Hack lay, still sleeping.

"What's wrong?" Stan asked, gripping Kyle's arm. He noticed the intruder. "Who is _that?_ "

"I don't know! I don't fucking know!" Kyle said, shaking now. Stan jumped out of bed, nearly falling as he struggled to extract his legs from the twisted sheets.

"Wake up," the man growled, grabbing Hack's shoulder and shaking it. Stan had cemented himself between the beds, his forearms raised, muscles hard and tensed, his body a shield before Kyle.

"Fer chrissake's man, what is it?" Hack moaned.

"Who is this guy?" Stan demanded.

"Jeez Louise, Swarm, fuckin' relax, will ya? He's just some 'bo who said he wanted to catch out to Texas," Hack said.

Stan groaned and dropped his arms to his sides, his fists slowly, but shakily unclenching. "Really? _Really?_ Christ, that's just – shit, would you get out of bed?" Stan said, tugging on Hack's arm. "We need to have a chat."

Hack grumbled incoherently and got up, glowering as he followed Stan around Kyle's bed. Stan leaned down, his hand flat on the bed, and murmured, "C'mon, we gotta go out in the hall for a sec." Kyle sprung out of bed, not needing to be told twice.

"Do you even know who that guy _is?_ He looks like an ex-con!" Stan rasped.

Hack raised his eyebrow. "Yeah?"

Stan's eye twitched. "Where'd you find that guy, anyway?" he asked.

"Some bar, I think. I dunno, I was real drunk. But I do remember that he said he was lookin' for field work, and told him he oughta catch out to Texas with us. He don't talk much, but he's a good guy. Why's it matter, anyway? S'not like we knew who Handle was – "

"You know that wasn't the same!" Kyle said, irritated to be spoken of as if he weren't there.

Hack turned to look at Kyle, like he had forgotten he was there. "Yeah, okay, I know," he admitted. Two long seconds passed. Hack placed his hand on Stan's shoulder and said, "Hey, you're big now, Swarm. And you got Handle now, too. Maybe it's time you go your own way."

"What? No!" Stan exclaimed. He clenched his eye shut and bowed his head, shoulders slumping. "You know I'm not just being a grouser for the hell of it, Hack."

Hack edged closer to Stan, and Kyle thought they were going to hug, but Hack just gave Stan's shoulder a few pats. "Yeah, I know, pal. Just trust me here, and give Mole a chance."

* * *

Even if Stan seemed intent upon doing so, Kyle wasn't going to listen to fucking _Hack_ , of all people, and give this animal man a chance.

"You ever been to Texas?" Stan asked, straining to maintain the conversation.

"No," Mole said without looking up. He continued picking the meat away from the chicken breast with his jagged nails. Mole was a fitting name for someone who only grunted short, simple responses and refused to use silverware, Kyle thought with disgust.

Kyle wanted to ask Stan to reconsider Hack's suggestion of splitting up, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. Besides, he was still over-analyzing the rather intimate energy he'd seen when Stan had so anxiously refused the idea. There was a sort of familial connection they had, or at least, Kyle wanted to think it was just brotherly. Mole slurped up a stringy piece of chicken and Kyle thought of those hobo wolves, devouring kids on the road. It dawned on Kyle with horrifying alarm that Stan and Hack could currently be, or perhaps had once been, in that sort of relationship. If Hack was in his late twenties or so now, he would have had enough seniority to exploit a fourteen year old Stan. Hack could have been a predator, could _still_ be one, Kyle realized, gripping the glass of whiskey tighter in his palm.

Hack smiled at him questioningly. Shit, he must have been staring. Kyle averted his gaze immediately and took a long, burning drink.

But Hack didn't seem like a sexual predator. Even if he had met Stan early on, when he was in his early twenties, that was awfully young to be a jocker. Frustratingly, Kyle was beginning to understand that he barely knew anything about either of them. All he knew about Stan was that he was from Montana, had a degree from the Hobo College in Chicago, smelled like fresh-cut firewood and fall leaves, and seemed to have bad dreams every night. It infuriated Kyle, knowing so little, whereas Hack probably knew Stan's entire life history, his secrets, his favorite books, even the things in his nightmares.

Hack launched into a spiel about the time he and Stan found a dead mole in a boxcar. Kyle found himself getting more irritated, hating Hack for needing to constantly remind everyone of the good times he and Stan had had on the road. Mole was glowering at Hack, clearly not enthused either, although most likely because he was offended on part of his animal kin.

Kyle's moody aggravation was made worse because Stan was still about a foot away from him in the booth. Usually by his third drink, at the very latest, Stan would be a lot less physically inhibited, throwing his arm around Kyle's shoulders, randomly pressing his palm to his back. But tonight, Stan wasn't getting any more animated, although he was way past the third drink, and he'd been quiet since he'd given up on getting Mole to talk. For the most part, Kyle was still sober, since he didn't want the alcohol to extinguish his anger towards this whole fucking day. Maybe he and Stan could bail, go back to the river and talk for a while. Kyle could ask how he'd met Hack, maybe even get the nerve to ask if he'd ever read _The Symposium_. Oh God, he better not. He must not be as sober as he thought.

"Were you serious? Were you, Hack?" Stan suddenly asked. He sounded drunk. Miserably drunk.

"Huh? 'Bout what?" Hack said.

"About splittin' up," Stan said tightly.

The worry in Hack's face was obvious. He opened his mouth, but paused for a beat before speaking. "No. I wasn't serious. Hey," he said, his voice softening. "I'm not goin' anywhere, so just forget I ever said anythin'."

"Then why'd you say it in the first place?" Stan shot back. Kyle held his breath, eyes darting from Stan to Hack, then back to Stan, who was glaring at Hack bitterly.

Hack rolled his eyes. "Man, what is your deal tonight? Christ, let's just get outta here."

It was almost nightfall, the streets alive with drunks shouting and heckling each other, silent silhouettes of women in huge feathered hats at the corners of buildings. Mole dipped into an alley in a rather suspicious manner, but Kyle was just glad the cretin had the sense to leave them for now.

"Where are we going?" Kyle asked.

"Down by the river. He's pro'ly gonna throw up," Hack said. He tried to pull Stan's arm over his shoulder to help him walk, but Stan violently shrugged him away, stumbling into Kyle.

"Sorry, sorry," Stan said, steadying himself.

"No, no, it's okay," Kyle said, touching Stan's arm, a little worried Stan might brush him away, too, but on another level, fairly certain he wouldn't. Stan allowed Kyle to drape his arm over his shoulders, which was a great relief, although Stan's weight leaning on him made walking difficult, and admittedly, Kyle was also concerned he might get barfed on.

Stan's face was pressed to his neck, and if Kyle wasn't mistaken, Stan was intermittently _sniffing_ him. However, he was probably mistaken.

The noises of the street faded behind them as they reached the rocky shore. Stan detached himself from Kyle's side and ran to the edge of the river, stumbling, almost tripping on the rocks. Where the dark sand met the water, he dropped to his knees and started throwing up. Absently, Kyle sat down next to Hack further up on the shore, having wholly forgotten his bitterness towards him.

The scene was disturbing, even apart from the vomiting: Stan's body was trembling at the edge of the river, a dark, defeated shape, dropping closer to the water each time he heaved. The last traces of dusk were beginning to fall away, making it harder to decipher the outline of his body, and the blackness of the river was swelling against the shore, threatening to pull him in. This was worrisome, and Kyle would have ran to him to keep the dark water from swallowing him up, but Stan was still vomiting, making horrible heaving sounds, and people usually preferred to throw up in relative privacy, Kyle figured, so he stayed put.

"Is he okay?" Kyle asked Hack, who was lighting a cigarette, his hand cupped around a match.

"What? 'Course he is," Hack replied, flicking the match out. "Then again, I s'pose that depends upon what ya mean by 'okay'."

Stan seemed to have stopped vomiting, but he was still hovering over the river, teetering on his knees. He toppled to his side, just at the water's edge, and without thinking, Kyle was running to him.

"Stan, Stan!" Kyle shouted, then slapped his hands over his mouth, because he wasn't supposed to call him that when other people were around. As he got closer, he could see small waves were pushing against Stan's side, drenching his clothes, and Kyle fell to the shore, his left knee hitting a sharp rock, but he didn't care. He put his hand on Stan's face, brushing his wet bangs away. "Are you okay?"

"Just let me lie here," Stan replied miserably.

"But you're getting all wet," Kyle pleaded, trying to pull Stan away from the water.

Grunting, Stan pushed himself up onto the shore. He grabbed at his face and ripped the eye patch off, crumpling it in his fist as he tore his arm away. " _Fuck_ ," he moaned, his voice low and crackling, weak and beaten.

Kyle studied Stan's face, squinting to see in the dark, because surely what he thought he had just seen must have been his mind playing a trick on him. He leaned down, his face so close to Stan's he could smell the stale stench of his vomit-breath, and then, with absolute clarity, he could see that Stan had two perfectly functional eyes, tears pouring from each of them.

Kyle opened his mouth, once, twice, but no words came out. Stan avoided his gaze, staring up at the night sky, and said somberly, "You can see Delphinus perfectly," which sounded too much like someone's famous last words that Kyle panicked and gripped the drenched fabric of Stan's shirt. He realized this was all getting a bit dramatic when he thought he should warn Stan not to go toward the light.

Quiet footsteps approached. "You feelin' any better, Stan?" Hack said, crouching down. "Woah, shit! I ain't seen yer other eye in a long time. But don't be a bakehead – put that thing back on." Stan did not put the eye patch back on, nor did he make any sign that he had heard Hack.

Kyle was getting progressively more confused. Why would Stan wear an eye patch day in and day out if he had two eyes? Why would _anyone_ do that? Unless they had a lazy eye, maybe. And if that were the case, it seemed unusual Stan would be intent on keeping that a secret. Kyle leaned back, wishing he had the gall to just _ask_ , but he was hesitant to speak up with Hack still there, always felt like an outsider around him. And it was so infuriating they never bothered to fill him in on anything, either!

Hack got up and tossed his cigarette into the water. "I think it's 'bout time we were headin' back," he said.

"Gimme a goddamn minute," Stan muttered. A few moments later, he sat up and reaffixed the patch over his left eye.

On the way back to town, Stan was walking much more steadily, but he draped his arm around Kyle's shoulder anyway. There was no sniffing this time, however. Stan just sniffled sadly and wiped his nose with his shirt sleeve once in a while.

Once they had arrived in front of the lodging house, Hack said, "Well, boys, I'll see ya in the mornin', then."

"What?" Stan rasped.

"I think you owe Handle an explanation, dontcha think? You can have the room to yourselves, tonight." Hack placed his hand on Stan's shoulder. "The night's still young, and I got somethin' to see to before we hit the next burg. Hey! Don't worry," he said, laughing. "I ain't emancipatin' you or nothin'. I'll come by sometime tomorrow afternoon so we can decide when we're gonna catch out."

"Christ, don't make him think it's like that," Stan said, knocking Hack's hand off his shoulder. "And tomorrow night. We should leave tomorrow night."

"Fine by me," Hack said. He saluted them jovially and walked away, disappearing into an alley across the street.

"I'm all wet," Stan said so sadly that Kyle couldn't help but laugh a little.

"You could take a bath?" Kyle suggested as they went inside, feeling guilty for laughing. Stan murmured something not necessarily affirmative, but he got a towel at the front desk.

"I need some crackers or something," Stan said, passing the stairwell into the kitchen, which was thankfully empty. They found a pack of saltines in a cabinet. On the way up the stairs, Stan quietly nibbled on a cracker. Kyle ate one, too, probably only because Stan was already on his second, but he regretted it as soon as he took the first bite and realized it was stale. Not horribly stale, but stale enough to taste it.

"Do you feel any better?" Kyle asked as they approached their room.

Stan finished chewing and grabbed another cracker, fiddling with it between his fingers. "I think so, yeah. Christ, I thought I was done with drinking like that. Well, anyway, you can come and wait with me while I wash up," he said, avoiding Kyle's eyes. "If, ah, you want to, that is."

"Oh – okay. Yes, sure," Kyle said, the words spilling out of his mouth much too quickly. He could feel his face heating up, hating himself for it.

Stan shut the bathroom door behind them, and promptly unbuttoned his shirt. Crouching down in front of the closed door, he pressed the red garment into the space between the floor and the bottom of the door. Kyle caught himself staring like an imbecile at Stan's back: the tanned flesh, slick from the river water and sweat, the smooth map of muscles, bending and weaving with his bones. And oh, splendid, he was getting an erection. Wonderful. He sighed at himself as he turned the bath water on, wanting to be useful at least. He twisted around and closed the lid of the toilet to sit on it, crossing his legs carefully as he wedged his dick under his thigh, which was a bitch to do, never comfortable, but highly necessary if Stan planned on disrobing entirely to bathe, which was an almost certainty, and thank God for that. The extrinsic embarrassment Kyle felt was overwhelming, though it wasn't humiliating in the mortifying sense, but rather, exciting. This was puzzling, since excitement and humiliation did not seem to be related, however, Kyle was not currently inclined to deliberate pragmatic meaning.

Stan sat on the floor, his back to the tub, shoulders hunched and arms draped over his knees. "Where do I even start," he said, moving his finger under the strap of the eye patch. He looked to the door suspiciously. "Once the tub fills up, I'll use my pants as another buffer and then I'll tell you everything from the beginning."

They sat in silence as the room grew muggier. Kyle's heart was pounding hard in his chest, and he prayed for the water to hurry and fill up the tub faster. He would be forever thankful Hack had prompted Stan to explain the mysterious eye patch to him, even making himself scarce for the night. Kyle felt guilty for suspecting he was one of those hobo wolves – Hack was not a bad guy. He should probably be nicer to him.

Stan twisted around to shut off the faucet when it was three-quarters of the way full, then stood up and unbuckled his belt, flinging it through the loopholes of his pants, pulling them down and climbing out of them in an admirably nonchalant fashion. It was as if it didn't even bother him he had an audience soaking up the sight of his cock, a few shades darker than his skin tone, the foreskin extending over the head – oh, he was uncircumcised. Kyle tucked this information into his brain, repeating it to himself while Stan pushed his pants into the foot of the door. He allowed himself to steal another glance when Stan got up and climbed into the tub, taking note of the details he'd missed: the thick black pubic hair trailing up to his navel, the brief view of his balls dangling freely just before he settled into the water. Kyle was so hard at this point it was getting painful to be squashing his erection so forcibly, so he unfolded his legs and grabbed the towel from the sink, placing it over his lap.

"Damn, you don't got any soap with ya, do ya?" Stan asked.

"I do, actually," Kyle replied, retrieving the bar of Ivory soap he'd brought from home from his satchel. He handed it to Stan, beaming, stupidly pleased to offer something useful.

"Thank you." Stan removed the eye patch and flung it over the side of the tub. He rubbed the bar between his hands, forming a lather he coated his face with, then splashed it away and sunk down, submerging his body up to his neck in the water, and breathed deeply. "I guess you could say I'm on the run. I've – I've killed a man. I didn't mean to, though," he said earnestly, glancing at Kyle for the shortest moment. "Fuck, wait, I gotta start at the beginning. Goddamn, I'm drunk. So, ah, anyway, I'd just left home, spring of eighth grade, and I was trying to catch out, all by myself, and hell, it was scary, but I felt alright knowing I had this .32 pistol I'd swiped from my dad, and, shit, Jesus – " He inhaled deeply, then continued: "It was the first week or two I'd been on the road, and I was catching out from Blackfoot, this little town up in Idaho, working my way south. I'd come across an empty for the ride, and that whole night, I had my hand in my coat pocket, gripped around the pistol 'cuz I was scared as hell being all by myself. So the train stops at the next burg, and I'm working on getting the door open when all of a sudden, it gives way and right in front of me, there's this road bull – a cop, the kind they got watching the yards for tramps – and he's telling me I'm in for a real hell of a time in the coop, that he's looking forward to delivering 'em a fresh punk for 'em to have something to play with. First thing I do is a try to run, but he grabs me by the collar and throws me against the car and it just – my gun, it – it just went off."

Stan fell silent, his gaze fixed ahead. "Next thing I know I'm looking at this bull lying on the ground. He kept opening his mouth like he wanted to ask me what happened, but he couldn't talk – only blood came out. I'd never seen anybody look so scared before," he said, his voice very quiet. "I couldn't think, barely knew what was happening, so I – I just ran. I ran as fast as my legs would carry me, outta the yard into some woods, and I didn't stop running till I lost my footing and fell into a ravine. I hid in there for a long time, thinking to myself _'I've just shot somebody, I just shot somebody dead.'_ A part of me was saying maybe he wasn't dead, maybe I'd just shot him in the leg or something, and as soon as somebody came along and saw him lying there, they'd take him to the hospital and he'd be fine. But I knew he was dead. I knew I'd killed somebody. I knew I was a murderer."

The steam hovered idly in the little room, thick and stupefying, slowing time, and Kyle had to remind himself to breathe.

"So, ah. God," Stan said. "I don't know how long I laid in that ditch. I felt like I was losing my mind, like I was being sucked through the earth down into hell. I musta stayed there most of the day, and when I finally got up, it felt like my body hadn't moved in a million years. I wandered around the woods, barely paying attention to where I was going, but I was definitely lost. I just kept thinking – knowing – I was going to hell for this, I deserved it, and I kept saying to myself, _'I've killed a man, I've killed a man, I've shot him dead, and I'm gonna have to pay for it.'_ I told myself I should go straight to the station and turn myself in, but I couldn't make myself do it. I couldn't – I didn't _want_ to. And, well, I was lost, anyway. Had no clue how I'd even get back to town."

The faucet dripped. Stan squeezed his eyes shut, and Kyle tried to find his voice, tell him he didn't have to continue if he didn't want to, but then Stan went on, his voice sounding more normal now: "It got darker, and I started getting worried, hearing all these noises in the woods, thinking someone was coming after me. I don't even know how I was still walking at that point, I was so fucking exhausted. Starving, too, so when I saw a campfire ahead, I headed straight toward it, didn't even think it mighta been, I dunno, a cop or something. There was this guy sitting by the fire, cooking something in a can, and first thing he does when he sees me is runs up to me, asking what happened. Things get sorta fuzzy then, I just remember eating some beans, and then I musta fallen asleep, because next thing I knew it was morning, and this guy was leaning over me asking if I felt any better. I think I musta told him the whole story the night before, because he was telling me we had to hurry up and catch out, and I needed a disguise of some sort. My hair was kinda long then, so we cut it all off with this old shaving razor he had, and then once we'd made it to some town in Nevada the next day, I got an eye patch at the drugstore. Hack was real good to me. I dunno what I woulda done if I hadn't come across him in the woods, shit. We got as far away from the west coast as we could, went straight to Norfolk and built bridges for a while, and I realized, _'Good God, I'm going to get away with this, aren't I?'_ and as much as it was a relief, it also scared the hell outta me."

So, Stan had accidentally killed somebody. It wasn't fazing Kyle as much as it probably should, which was perhaps concerning, but the fact it had been an accident was of unavoidable importance; Stan would never kill someone intentionally, Kyle could say so with absolute certainty. And he'd only been a child! Really, hadn't Stan been a victim, too? A victim of homelessness and poverty and –

"I still think about it every day," Stan said. "I can't ever forget that I took somebody's life. I won't ever forgive myself for it, either. It messes me up real bad when I remember it too keenly – his face, the fear in his eyes, that blood." He shook. "I don't know – I still don't know what I'm supposed to do. Sometimes I still think I oughta turn myself in, though I doubt that will make me feel any better. Hack always says it wasn't my fault, which is a big fuckin' joke, since there's no way it _wasn't_ – who else's fault would it be, y'know?"

Kyle got down off the toilet seat and knelt on the floor. "But it was an accident. You can't forget that," he said, peering up at Stan, trying to make eye contact. Guiltily, Kyle let himself steal a quick glance down, feeling lightheaded by how idly innocent Stan's foreskin-covered cockhead looked peeking out of the bathwater. Flustered, he promptly leaned back.

"Does that even change anything?" Stan asked.

"Yes," Kyle said intently. "Believe me, it does. You have to know it does."

Stan sat up, the water churning around him, and turned toward Kyle, looking at him almost meekly with two great blue eyes, his face complete, expression whole without the eye patch. Kyle felt he was evaporating into the hot air, a little puff of mist, and he damned the universe for allowing such a perfect set of eyes to exist.

"Thank you," Stan said, and that wretched voice, those sad, wet eyes crinkling with gratitude, the sheer humanity of this boy, impelled Kyle to wrap his arms around Stan's shoulders, drawing him into an awkward hug.

This close, Kyle could hear a small, weak sound shudder through Stan's chest, and he squeezed him a little tighter, the dampness of Stan's skin gluing them together. Kyle held on longer than he probably should have, wanting to say something significant, but nothing sufficient came to mind.

Stan placed his hands on Kyle's shoulders, pushing him away slightly, and Kyle withdrew his arms immediately, overcome with shame, an apology forming on the tip of his tongue. Stan moved his hands to Kyle's cheeks, framing his face, and said, "I'm so glad I met you."

"I – me too," Kyle stammered, acutely aware of his heartbeat climbing up his throat.

The last traces of worry vanished from Stan's face, and he exhaled in uneven little puffs, his hands trembling on Kyle's face. Time felt even slower now, and Kyle anticipated he was going to be kissed even before Stan leaned forward and pressed his lips to his own. The kiss lasted only a few seconds before Stan pulled away, his eyes huge. "Shit, sorry, I forgot I threw up. Ugh, fuck," he groaned.

Kyle absorbed the horror in Stan's face, a terrible panic spurring through him until he realized Stan simply meant he had vomit-breath. "Oh, um. Brush your teeth?" Kyle suggested, which was quite brazen for him, but he desperately wanted to kiss Stan again, for real, and for longer than a couple seconds.

"Yeah, after I get outta here," Stan said. He scrubbed the bar of soap over his arms and chest, and Kyle made a mental note to remember every place on Stan's body it traveled, knowing full well he had the lewd intention of recalling the soap's whereabouts the next time he used it on his own body. Stan washed his hair, too, then dunked his head in the water to rinse the soap out. Kyle was hard again, had been, and his dick throbbed as he envisioned how thrilling it would be when Stan emerged from the water, like a tanned Poseidon rising triumphantly from the sea. It dawned on him this insane analogy was strangely on par with Stan's fixation with the constellation Delphinus, though there remained the question of who Amphitrite was, and without hesitation, he fashioned himself into her role. They'd ride hippocamps through their underwater kingdom, lounge together in beds of seaweed, go to the surface and sunbathe on warm beaches. When he began to wonder if their Triton would have black or red hair, he bitterly chastised himself for the absurdity of such thinking.

Stan got out of the tub in an inert, very human-like manner, but there was still something divine even in the way he shivered before Kyle thrust the towel into his arms, feeling stupid for his delay in handing it over. Kyle forced himself to look away as Stan dried himself off, certain he'd die if he saw Stan's dick from this close. Stan wrapped the towel around his waist and dug a toothbrush and a roll of Colgate's Ribbon Dental Cream from his bag, which delighted Kyle, since it was the same brand he used. Kyle brushed his teeth, too, scrubbing his gums ruthlessly while Stan got dressed. It was sad to see all that glorious skin covered up again, even worse to see Stan's left eye go back into hiding, but hopefully there'd be more opportunities in the future. Fingers crossed. On both hands.

"We should go back to the room," Stan said. "So we won't be, um, interrupted, if anyone wants the bathroom."

"Ah, right," Kyle agreed. God forbid if any dirty hobo came knocking at the bathroom door.

Stan didn't flip the lights on in their room. Kyle almost wanted to at least turn on a lamp so he could see the expression on Stan's face and know if this kissing business was going to continue or if they were calling it a night and heading to separate beds since Hack was gone for the evening. He was starting to get downright jumpy, but just then, Stan put his hands on his shoulders and leaned forward, his breath warm on Kyle's lips for a hesitant moment before he pressed his mouth to Kyle's. Kyle wished that instead of compiling that crackpot mermaid theory, he had gone over everything he knew about kissing, though, admittedly, it wasn't much, but opening his mouth felt like the right thing to do as the tip of Stan's tongue darted over his bottom lip. The kissing deepened and Kyle stopped worrying about what the right thing to do was when their mouths meshing together felt almost synchronized in its haphazardness. He was too aroused to bother with overthinking anyway, his concentration focused on his cock pulsing against the fabric of his undergarments, dampened with pre-come, and the taste of Stan's mouth, the texture of his tongue.

Stan broke the kiss, panting harshly, then wrapped his arms around Kyle's neck, drawing their bodies together. "I've never done this before," he said.

"Done what?" Kyle asked, breath hitching, feeling the semi-hardness of Stan's cock pressing against him. Surely he didn't just mean kissing?

"No, um. This kinda stuff," Stan murmured, pressing their hips together.

"Oh. Me neither," Kyle admitted, mumbling. He had once seen a photo of an ancient Greek plate which depicted two men engaging in unnatural intercourse, an act which he found difficult to wrap his head around. However, Kyle knew enough about inversion to understand it was not the _only_ act. The word "fellatio" came to mind and his head spun, suddenly needing to know what Stan's cock tasted like.

"Shit, I'm an idiot for having drunk so much. I can't even stay hard," Stan said. "So, ah, I could – ?" Hesitantly, he brushed his thumb over the waistband of Kyle's pants.

"Yeah," Kyle breathed. "But – on the bed?"

Kyle's legs didn't seem to be working properly, and he staggered toward bed, Stan holding onto him as they both fell into it. Stan buried his face in Kyle's neck, his fingers working on unbuttoning the fly to his pants. Without meaning to, Kyle jerked forward into Stan's palm, tortured by the faintness of the touch, needing to feel more. Kyle tugged his undergarments down, sighing with relief as his cock sprung free. Stan pressed a wet kiss to the corner of his jaw and wrapped his fingers just below the head of his cock, jerking it so slowly that a tear of frustration welled in Kyle's eye.

"You can ah, do it faster. If you want," Kyle whispered, fearful he would offend Stan, but he was just about to die from this torture. Stan obeyed, gripping him a little tighter, and began pumping in the most exquisitely deliberate fashion. Despite himself, Kyle let out a moan, and wholly embarrassed, he buried his faced in Stan's shoulder. Stan's fingers on his cock felt a thousand times better than even his most satisfying masturbation sessions, the ones where he'd lounge in the tub and tease himself for upwards an hour before getting out and lying face down on the cold tile floor, jerking his cock with manic relinquish.

Stan brushed his thumb over his slit, surging Kyle into the next level of arousal, the stage where mentally abating orgasm was futile. Perhaps aware of this, Stan stroked him just slightly faster, and before Kyle could give him some sort of warning, he was coming, making another ridiculous-sounding noise as he emptied himself over Stan's knuckles. Stan softened his grip and jerked him through his orgasm in exponentially slower strokes with such gentleness Kyle thought he might cry.

"Ah, sec," Stan said quietly, Kyle's soft cock flopping from his hand as he got up. Kyle was acutely humiliated when it occurred to him Stan was wiping his spilled _ejaculate_ from his hand, and he immediately pulled his pants back up, gritting his teeth as he shoved his dick, still a bit sensitive, into his underwear. Kyle was certainly grateful, however, that Stan had made sure he didn't come all over his dress shirt. He was so polite, such a gentleman.

Stan climbed back into bed, and instinctively, Kyle held his arms out. They sunk into each other, their limbs interlocking beneath the sheets.

"Um. Thank you," Kyle said quietly.

"I feel like I should be the one thanking you," Stan said. "For ah, not thinking I'm a bad person because of – you know."

"There's no way I would. I – I couldn't," Kyle said, pressing their foreheads together.

"Thank you," Stan whispered into his mouth. They kissed sleepily, in slow, chaste brushes, grazing their noses together, talking without speaking. An annoying voice in Kyle's head was pestering him to take a long, hard look at what he was doing, but it was easy to ignore, because he was exhausted, and because it felt so good being wrapped up in Stan's body, warm and safe, hidden in comfortable darkness.

Kyle woke up with his back to Stan's chest, soft wisps of his breath tickling his neck. He decided then, quite pointedly, that he could absolutely live with being inverted if it was this dizzyingly exciting. Besides, he was already a degenerate heathen for running away and fashioning himself a hobo, so tossing in more deviance made little difference. In fact, it actually made everything better, positively tantalizing, and he cradled Stan's hand against his chest, smiling dopily. How ironic that he'd always been miserable trying to be _good_ , whereas life was so much more enjoyable being _bad!_

Stan murmured sleepily, and Kyle twisted around, his head spinning with giddy euphoria. "You awake?" he asked.

"Mm, sorta," Stan said.

Kyle snuck one arm around Stan, burrowing into him. "How do you feel?" he said.

"Good. Really good, actually," Stan said, burying his face in Kyle's hair.

They lay in bed for a while longer, finally getting up at eleven thirty to grab a late breakfast. It was crowded in the kitchen, half a dozen hobos sitting around drinking coffee, so they took their cinnamon rolls and apples outside and sat on the steps of the little back patio.

"What time do you think Hack will come by?" Kyle asked.

"Dunno, pro'ly three or four, if he was out all night," Stan said, licking the icing off his fingers. "We can just kill time up in the room till then." There was definitely something implicit in the way he said "kill time," and Kyle had to firmly press his lips together to keep from grinning.

They were on each other the second they were back in the room, their mouths meeting in sloppy bursts as they pawed at each other, desperate to feel more, crazed by the feeling. Every muscle in Kyle's body seemed to melt in the heat of Stan's hands, and he sunk to the floor, dragging Stan down with him. Kyle's dick throbbed, trapped in his undergarments, and he wanted to pull Stan closer, wanted him to feel it, but he didn't quite have the nerve yet.

Stan sat back on his knees, panting hard, his eye dark and glassy. Kyle had to the see the other one. "Can I?" he asked, touching the strap of the eye patch.

Stan tore it off, flinging it somewhere behind him. His eyes softened and he placed his hands on either side of Kyle's face, moving in gradually to plant his mouth over Kyle's, sighing like a great weight had been lifted off his shoulders.

Hesitantly, Kyle lowered his hand between their bodies, half-stunned he was even doing so, and genteelly brushed his fingers over Stan's crotch, his brain turning to mush when he felt Stan was hard, too.

Someone walked past their door, and they both froze.

"Ah, let's – " Stan said, nodding toward the bed.

Kyle wrapped his arms around Stan's neck, letting himself be all but carried. He couldn't just _let go_ – even the idea seemed preposterous.

They dropped to the bed awkwardly, the fervency of the mood reinstated as Stan began working on unbuttoning Kyle's shirt, whispering, "Yeah? Okay?" into his neck, to which Kyle could only nod.

Stan pulled the white cotton dress shirt off, their gazes fixed on each other. Kyle had never experienced such intense extrinsic embarrassment; it had expanded within itself so much it was pouring out of him. The odd part was how much he loved it: being made vulnerable like this, allowing himself to be exposed, letting the shame of showing Stan his obviously erect nipples wash over him. It was as humiliating as much as it was arousing, being seen like this in the light of day, and the feeling augmented upon itself when Stan moved his head to his chest and began sucking on one pert nipple, rolling his tongue over it. Kyle cried out, jerking his hips up and rubbing himself against Stan's leg like an animal in heat, too inundated with lust to care about higher-faculty leanings such as self-control, or pride.

"You want me to take care of you again?" Stan said in a low voice, cupping Kyle's erection in his palm.

"No, I need to – you, too," Kyle replied, finding himself unable to piece a proper sentence together.

"Mm, yeah. 'Kay." Stan draped himself over Kyle, winding his arms behind him as he rubbed his groin into Kyle's thigh, groaning from the contact. "Need to get out of these clothes first," he said between choppy breaths.

Stan tore his shirt off and crawled out of his pants, chucking them over the side of the bed. He sunk back down around Kyle, pressing himself firmly against his side. Kyle began to worry, anxious now that the ball was in his court, and as much as he wanted to scoot down and wrap his lips around that beautiful, uncut cock, he had no idea how to initiate the action.

"I want to suck you," he whispered in Stan's ear.

"Oh – God. Yeah – yeah, okay," Stan said, his mouth hanging open. From how wrecked he sounded, Kyle felt it was now doubly important to get his mouth on Stan's dick with utmost haste, and he pushed away any lingering hesitation and moved downward. He wasn't exactly sure how he'd get all of Stan's cock in his mouth, but he accepted it as a challenge. Curling his fingers around the base, he leaned down and tentatively licked the tip, breathing in the scent of him, which was stronger, so much more intense right here. Stan moaned like he was begging, a muffled, pleading sort of cry, and Kyle took a deep breath before guiding his cock into his mouth, remembering to be careful of his teeth.

Tightening his fingers around the base, he jerked it carefully, saddened he couldn't get much more into his mouth. He moved his tongue around the underside of Stan's cock, gliding over the delicious contours of skin. He suddenly realized, and pretty belatedly, damn it, that he actually had to _suck_ , so he promptly did so. Unexpectedly, Stan's hips jolted forward, shoving his cock towards the precipice of Kyle's throat, making him gag.

"Sorry, sorry," Stan stammered.

Kyle tried to say, "No, it's fine," but he had a dick in his mouth, so his words were completely unintelligible. He placed his hand on Stan's hip, thumbing the bone, and resumed sucking, more intently this time. His own cock was throbbing almost painfully, and he couldn't help but let his other hand sink beneath the waistband of his underwear, grazing his fingers down the shaft.

"I'm – I'm," Stan said, frantically moving his hand over the top of Kyle's head.

Kyle moaned around his dick, lapping in quick bursts across the underside, egging him on. Barely realizing it, he came himself at the mere thought of Stan emptying himself down his throat. He felt out of it, dazed, as Stan's come spilled into the back of his mouth. Admittedly, it tasted pretty terrible, but a proper sense of accomplishment necessitated every ounce be swallowed, so with prompt alacrity, Kyle did so. Beaming like a fool, he dropped down to Stan's chest, the _thump-thump_ of his heartbeat comfortingly loud in his ear, lulling the corporeal world into a softer version of itself.

* * *

They spent the afternoon in bed, mapping their hands over each other's bodies, hesitation dissolving as they familiarized themselves with each angle and curve. Their touches would grow longer, more fervent, then give way to a sudden impulse to grab the other. Kyle had never had so many orgasms in such a short amount of time, and he had certainly never come in anyone's mouth. He couldn't stop himself from craving more; it was as if Stan had flipped an irreversible switch inside him that would make him need this forever. And he could sense, with utmost clarity, that Stan was equally affected, wanting to touch and be touched just as badly. But it was more than just the addictive touching; there was something else, too, something heavier than mere lust encircling them as they lapped dazedly at each other's mouths, Stan's hand wrapped around their half-hard cocks, idly jerking them together.

"Never stop touching me," Kyle said, moving his hand through Stan's hair.

"I don't ever want to," Stan said, his voice low and throaty, so very _male_ , that Kyle's dick went full-hard almost instantly. He spread his hands over Stan's chest, thumbing a nipple as he traced his ribs, wanting to feel more, never quite being able to feel enough. Stan had his arm wrapped snugly around his back, his hand pumping their erections together, and it was good, so good, but no matter how tightly he held onto Stan, no matter how much he willed their bodies to melt together, Kyle still felt too whole within himself. It took them both a long time to come, and Kyle wondered if he might at all, until he had the astounding epiphany that the prime appeal of sexual intercourse, unnatural intercourse included, _must_ be that sense of unity, two separate bodies merging into one. It was a rather weak orgasm, and only a small amount of ejaculate forced its way out, dripping onto Stan's hand. Stan thrust his hips forward in short, staunch bursts, and made a pleading, almost pained-sounding little noise as he came. Kyle pressed a firm kiss to his forehead, affection and something akin to heartache crashing over him, like his chest was trying to open up wide enough to house Stan's goodness.

* * *

They had neglected to pay attention to the time, and somehow, alarmingly, it was already four o'clock. Kyle fretted – Hack would be here any minute, and they were positively filthy. They rushed to the bathroom, squatting in the tub and scrubbing themselves clean, making it back to the room in a little under ten minutes.

"Hey," Hack said. They both jumped, and Kyle gasped in a very ridiculous way he wished he could take back.

"Jesus, you scared the shit out of me," Stan said, covering his face with his hand.

"Why?" Hack asked. He was lounging on his bed, completely nonchalant, taking loud bites of an apple. "Did you guys forget I was comin'?"

"No, we just – never mind," Stan said, pushing the door closed with his foot.

"So. How goes it? Ready to bust this joint?" Hack said.

"God, yeah," Stan and Kyle said in unison, glancing at each other for a short second before turning away, blushing. Kyle realized in horror that the room probably still smelled like sex despite the fact they'd opened the windows, but he didn't dare sniff the air to be sure. The most glaring evidence of all, their unmade bed, probably rife with stains, stood between them and Hack. Mortified, Kyle inferred from Hack's silence that he was beginning to piece the situation together with one-hundred-percent accuracy.

"What's wrong with you two?" Hack asked.

"What? Nothing," Stan said, his eyes darting to the bed. "C'mon, let's just – get going."

They went to the same bar as yesterday for an early dinner, and ate ravenously. Kyle wanted nothing more than to go back to the lodging house and take a nap, and as much as he disliked the overcrowded, dirty streets of Storyville, it was, in a way, starting to feel homey, and he was loath to be catching out again so soon. He didn't want to think of the misery working the fields under the Texan sun would be. He'd never had a real job before, and though he was reasonably fit, he excelled in less rigorous activities, ones which relied more on precision than sheer strength, like fencing and golf.

After eating, they moved to the bar. Kyle sipped a single glass of lemonade for upwards an hour, certain than if he consumed any alcohol he'd promptly fall asleep. Stan, now into his second drink, was becoming a lot less physically reserved, either his hand resting on Kyle's thigh under the counter, or arm tossed over his shoulder, fingers skirting across the collar of his shirt. Kyle could feel Hack's eyes on him, and he almost wanted to shout, _"Yes, it_ is _what it looks like!"_ except he would never say something so blatant, at least not in public. So he ignored Hack and concentrated on the weight of Stan's arm around him, reveling the fleeting moments in which Stan's fingers would brush over his collarbone.

Mole was waiting for them at the edge of the freight yard. Hack was markedly overjoyed to see him, or more likely, was just stupid drunk. They easily came across an empty. Stan and Kyle settled together in the far left of the car, a disorganized barrage of empty boxes separating them from Hack and Mole. The train would begin moving, only to wind to a halt a few seconds later for more freight to be loaded up. The fifteenth time Kyle felt the wheels begin to turn beneath him, he braced himself for when they'd jerk to a halt, but they kept moving, getting faster, even, and oh, wait, they were finally leaving the station, thank God. Kyle slumped down the wall of the boxcar, leaning his head against Stan's shoulder.

"Are you, um. Happy?" Stan said very quietly.

"Yes," Kyle said, and it was the truth; he was happy, and though he was concerned about the field work, and disliked sleeping in boxcars, and was wearing the same clothes as yesterday, all those things felt completely manageable because Stan was here, kissing him very softly as he pulled him into his lap.


	4. Chapter 4

Texas was brutal – at first. Kyle made an honest effort to shock cut grain alongside Stan, Hack, and the gruesome Mole, and somehow, he managed to survive the first day. However, hours' worth of trailing behind a tractor-drawn binder and shocking the bundles the machine so carelessly dropped, followed by a fitful night of sleeping in a barn, left his body aching enough to destroy his immediate dedication, though not his general determination. He resolved to take a one week break from fieldwork in order to strengthen his body, and he adhered to an exercise routine based on a steady build-up of push-ups, sit-ups, and jogging alongside the stream. Although it was exhausting business, within just a few days, he was feeling less physically dilapidated and generally stronger. He began to sort of enjoy it, since he was able to relish some privacy during the day for diary-writing, and also because he used going to pick up Stan at the farm at five o'clock as motivation to get him through his workouts. What he was not enjoying – what he was in fact abhorring a great deal – was all this outside-business, the lack of running water, and the sourly uncomfortable sleeping quarters, which of course they had to share with a dozen other harvest hands.

Beginning the third night, he and Stan took to slipping away from the barn to find a quiet spot to sleep outside, colloquially referred to as "covering with the moon," a much more romantic label, which was actually rather appropriate considering their nighttime activities. With no potential onlookers, and the blankets the farmer's wife had provided spread over soft grass serving as much more comfortable bedding than the barn's old straw, Kyle was both pleased and surprised to find that sleeping outside was quite preferential to sleeping in the barn. The nights were warm, though not so warm that the temperature discouraged huddling close together as the occasional cool breeze whispered across the fields, whisking the last scents of spring into their nostrils. The panorama of stars would change from a bright, bustling atlas, their twinkling as heavy and alive as their rough kissing, to a quiet dotting of nightlights, an optical lullaby which sung them softly into dreamland.

Kyle understood that his infatuation with this inebriating romance (coupled with his compulsion to at least appear as physically resilient as Stan), prevented him from actively complaining about not having a toilet, or a bed, let alone anything resembling a bath. But despite the fact he could convince himself mid-orgasm that all he truly needed was Stan, Stan touching him, Stan's mouth on his neck, his encouraging whispers in his ear, Kyle was desperate for satisfactory room and board after having spent a solid four days and nights out in the open. He ached for even the shoddiest room in the most rundown lodging house, though the local stem was more of a makeshift camp than part of an actual town, a "jungle," as it was called, and it felt like as much, with hobos scampering all over the place in drunken disarray.

On the sixth day of Kyle's training sabbatical, he realized with horror that the stress of outdoor living had become greater than his daily excitement to engage in what he had, rather embarrassingly, started referring to in his mind as "making love." So, when Stan offhandedly mentioned an abandoned house near the next farm on the line, Kyle wanted to be skeptical and tell himself it may have been demolished, or overrun by wanderers in the past year, but he was too thrilled about the prospect of sleeping in a bed again to bother arming himself for future disappointment.

"How long do you think we'll be able to stay?" Kyle asked, squirming a little closer to Stan. They were curled up together at the foot of a fruitless mulberry tree, blue-white moonlight shining through the spaces between the leaves.

"A couple weeks, I'm guessing. Depends on the work we can find," Stan said. "Hopefully we'll be able to come across some threshing jobs. You still wanna work, right?"

"Yes, I plan to. I'm starting to get bored during the day. Bored and lonely," Kyle said, slipping his hand underneath Stan's shirt.

"Lonely?" Stan teased, moving his hand over Kyle's. "And were you lonely all those years before you met me?"

"Yes, I was," Kyle answered seriously. "I just didn't realize it."

Stan made a small, pitying sound in his throat and pressed their foreheads together, his lips skirting across Kyle's as he said, "You don't have to be lonely anymore."

Kyle swallowed up every word: each syllable that flooded into his heart made him feel brave enough to crack open the doors to even the parts of himself he hated, wanting to trust Stan with what was in each of those lonely rooms.

* * *

Since Stan estimated the harvest would be finished in just two more days, weather depending, Kyle decided it would be futile, not to mention awkward, to go back to the farm and request to be hired again. Two days' worth of salary was four dollars, which was certainly nothing to sneeze at, but with the imminent prospect of a private bedroom, his time would be better spent contemplating the practical logistics of unnatural intercourse and how he could subtlety plant the idea in Stan's head that they should try it.

In the cool of the morning, Kyle sat with his back to the mulberry tree and wrote a diary entry regarding the plan:

_It seems it would be difficult, technically speaking, and this may be the reason why S has not brought it up. However, I do not believe difficult things are less worthwhile, or less worthy of pursuing. In fact, their difficulty may make them more valuable, since they require greater effort and more forethought._

_I believe the process would be identical to separating two objects which are stuck together, though in the opposite way. Firstly, heat is necessary to relax the bond, and then, lubrication can be added to easily pull the two objects apart. Unfortunately, I am not currently in possession of any sort of lubricant, and I sincerely doubt Ivory soap would suffice. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I'll have time to slip into a drugstore in the next town, although I'm not sure what believable excuse I could offer S for having to go in alone._

_I suppose the easiest way of communicating this plan to S would be to present him with some type of lubricant, and trust that he'll comprehend my intentions, since I'm so prudish on the subject matter I'm being vague and roundabout in my own diary._

Kyle clasped his diary shut and sighed, concentrating on willing away his erection. He ought to start his exercise regimen before the hottest part of the day, but he wasn't feeling particularly energized. He ended up wasting the day nibbling on biscuits, napping, and daydreaming about erect cocks penetrating slick holes.

* * *

Two days later, they rode the Sabine and East Texas Railway to Ogden. Because so many farms were reliant on migratory workers, security was lax on the rail yards during the wheat harvest, and empty boxcars were easy to come by. The ride to Ogden was short, barely over an hour, and it was still light out when they arrived at the freight yard. They helped unload cargo, and Kyle felt a surge of pride in knowing this was a real man's work.

"Welp," Hack said, dusting off his eternally-dirty slacks. "Guess we better get goin'. S'gonna be a bit of a walk to that house."

Kyle frowned. They were heading to the house immediately? Not even staying in town for a drink first so he'd have the opportunity to sneak away to the drugstore? "Don't you guys want to stay in town for a drink first?" he casually propositioned.

"I dunno. Hack?" Stan said.

"I'm pretty beat. So's Mole," Hack said, nudging him. Mole made a small growling noise, but he didn't move away from Hack, who let his hand rest on Mole's naked arm for a bit too long.

"Sorry," Stan said, shrugging and offering Kyle an apologetic look.

"Oh, no, I don't –– Actually, the thing is, I have a headache, and I was just going to stop in the drugstore and buy a bottle of aspirin," Kyle said, aware of how theatrical he sounded. "So, I will just – go ahead and do that, so – Be right back!" He took off dashing down the dirt road leading from the station, groaning at himself all the way to the main street for being so damn obvious.

His training routine over the past week was already proving useful – he was barely out of breath by the time he made it into town and came across a drugstore. He dusted himself off before heading into the store, maintaining a nonchalant demeanor as he asked the pharmacist for a jar of Vaseline. He paid for it, shoved the jar into his satchel, and marched back outside, feeling quite proud of himself for succeeding in part one of his mission. Stan, Hack, and Mole were coming down the street now, Stan walking more briskly than the other two, and Kyle promptly put on his sick-face because he remembered he was supposed to have a headache.

"Did you get the aspirin?" Stan asked. He seemed more confused than concerned. Kyle would tell him the truth later, when they were alone.

The walk to the house was not as long as Kyle was anticipating it would be, and he still felt quite energetic, likely thanks to his afternoon naps. It was just about dusk when they arrived, and the old house looked sort of scary, although that really just added to the allure: the orange glow of the sun setting behind it made it look more creepily picturesque than actually spooky. Regardless, Kyle grabbed for Stan's hand as they stepped inside.

Besides being incredibly dusty, the interior was strangely orderly, as if the owner had up and left for no apparent reason. The dining room table's chairs were pushed in neatly, the parlor was tidy in its mundane tackiness, and the upstairs bedrooms were very adequate, with ordinary, clean-looking quilts spread over the beds. Of course, Kyle's standards for lodging had lowered significantly in the past few weeks, and he was just grateful not to be sleeping in an old barn. Sure, the whole house could use a good cleaning, and the Farmer's Almanac from three years ago lying on the nightstand was definitely eerie, but a little dust never hurt anyone, and there was no such thing as ghosts.

Although it was a bit too warm for his silk pajamas, Kyle put the bottoms on anyway, knowing he wouldn't be wearing them for very much longer, given the way he could feel Stan's gaze on him, seeing right through the fabric. Kyle felt his cock stiffen and he hurried to join Stan on the bed.

"I didn't really have a headache," Kyle said. "I um, bought this, actually." He pulled the jar of Vaseline from his satchel and presented it to Stan, who cautiously took it from Kyle's hands.

"Vaseline?"

"Well, yes," Kyle said, sitting up straight, feeling his face flush feverishly red. "If you were interested in going further with what we've been doing lately."

Stan's eye widened, and he mouthed a silent "Ooh," before replying, "I would be very – interested."

Kyle exhaled with relief, only then realizing that he'd been holding his breath. "Ah. Good." He cleared his throat. "Yes. Good."

Stan laughed nervously. "So, ah, how do you want to do this?"

Kyle could feel his face burning up, the room suddenly so hot. He forced himself to mutter: "I was thinking you on top. Um. If that's okay."

"Okay," Stan said, nodding slowly. He swallowed audibly.

"We don't have to do it if you don't want to," Kyle said quickly.

"No!" Stan responded, sounding almost panicked. "I mean – no, I want to," he said, looking at Kyle very intently. "Let's just – here." He leaned forward to set the jar of Vaseline on the nightstand, then began to pull the bed covers down. Kyle eagerly crawled under the blankets with him, desperate to shed his pajama bottoms, but loath to do so in the light of the fading day.

"I'm melting," Kyle murmured. He fiddled with his waistband, vying for Stan to disrobe him.

"Let's get these off then," Stan said, the confidence in his voice sounding forced. Kyle bit down on his lip to hold back a moan when Stan's fingers skirted over the skin above the waistband, each gentle touch surging straight to his dick. As Stan slowly tugged his pants down, freeing his erection, Kyle savored the extrinsic embarrassment of exposing himself to Stan like this, his nervousness beginning to flutter away.

The anxiety came back in a rush when he could sense Stan hesitate for a moment. "Um. Let me get outta my clothes, too," Stan murmured. He shuffled under the blankets, peeling the clothes off his body, then kicked them over the side of the bed. Once disrobed, he scooted closer to Kyle, tentatively resting the palm of his hand on his shoulder. "Do want to, um, just kiss first?" he asked.

"Alright," Kyle replied, torn between amusement at Stan's shyness and the overwhelming urge to preserve this painfully sweet side of him forever.

Stan kissed him timidly at first, in a way that reminded Kyle of the first few times they'd kissed, which felt like so much longer than only a week ago. As their kisses became hungrier, they slipped into the familiar comfort they'd been growing accustomed to the past few days. Stan jerked their cocks together, exerting restraint in not pumping them to completion, made all the more difficult by the fact that Kyle simply could not help himself from thrusting into Stan's grip.

"Can you – get the Vaseline," Kyle said between pants, sensing that Stan was delaying now, and God damn it, he wasn't going to come without a dick in his ass.

"Ah, yeah," Stan said. He reached over Kyle for the jar and uncapped it.

Kyle remembered then, as he watched Stan liberally coat his erection with Vaseline, that this wasn't going to work unless the receiving end was properly lubricated, too. He'd mapped everything out logistically, yes, but he only realized now he hadn't considered this from a purely physical standpoint. Never once had he touched himself back there, let alone had anything in it as large as Stan's cock, and as he took the jar and scooped up some of the Vaseline with his fingertips, he painstakingly tried to swallow his apprehension.

Feeling Stan's eyes on him, he felt inextricably ridiculous as he reached around his backside to smear the Vaseline over his hole. His heartbeat was thudding in his head, oppressively so, and he tried to breathe evenly, to keep calm. He wanted to go about this properly, which meant pushing into himself a tiny bit, to ensure that Stan would be able to go in easily.

"Ready?" Stan asked cautiously once Kyle had placed the Vaseline back on the table.

"Yes," Kyle said, ashamed it came out as a wavering whisper. "Yes," he repeated, assuredly this time, as if to convince himself that he was, in fact, prepared.

"Alright, um," Stan murmured, still holding his dick. He awkwardly wrapped his arm around Kyle's back and scooted closer, gently pushing him down until they were on top of each other.

It allayed Kyle, having Stan's body covering his own, feeling his erection hard, slick, and ready against his thigh. Stan's face was very close to his, guarded, watching for any reaction. Kyle brushed Stan's bangs away and pressed a kiss to his forehead. "Don't be nervous. Please."

"I've never done this before," Stan admitted, burying his face into Kyle's shoulder.

"Me neither," Kyle said. He wrapped his arms around Stan's back, and in a hushed voice, whispered in his ear, "Don't you want to know what it's like though? It's supposed to feel um. Really good." He was pleased to hear Stan groan, elated to feel him jerk against his thigh with an eager jolt.

"Yeah," Stan said, his voice breathy and low, intoxicating like the thick scent of magnolias on hot summer evenings. Kyle felt a flush of tingling warmth washed over him, and he shivered, rolling his hips against Stan's abdomen. Stan reached down between their sweat-slicked bodies, his fingers grazing over Kyle's weeping erection, and gently cupped his balls in his hand, pulling them out of the way. Despite himself, Kyle let out a short whimper, unsure if he wanted Stan to squeeze harder or let go. Stan did let go, moving his hand away as he situated himself between Kyle's legs, snugly wedging his dick between his thighs.

This was perplexing, and for a moment Kyle wondered if this was a necessary step he didn't know about. He considered himself fairly well-versed, having studied that Greek plate for hours upon hours. It seemed impossible for Stan to know more about unnatural intercourse than he did.

"Oh God, you were right," Stan said, interrupting Kyle's haphazard thoughts.

"What? About what?"

Stan pressed his face against Kyle's neck, inhaling deeply. "This feels – really good. Really, really good."

"Oh, ah, yeah."

Stan began moving his hips in small, tentative bursts, moving in and out from between Kyle's thighs. Perhaps, Kyle thought, he'd eventually pick up enough speed, then delve deeper and penetrate him _back there_ , but this didn't make much sense, considering the angle was wrong. Not to mention it would probably hurt.

Just as Kyle's erection was beginning to wane, he felt Stan's hand move between them and grasp his cock in his hand, pumping slowly at first, with the rhythm of his thrusts. Kyle concentrated on Stan's grip around him, somewhat satiated by the familiarity. Although he still didn't understand what exactly it was they were doing, at least there was some consolation in seeing Stan clearly in ecstasy, moving in and out from between his legs much faster now, his groaning interspersed with muffled whimpers.

Kyle's orgasm took him by surprise. He tensed, inadvertently squeezing his legs together even tighter, and thrust upward into Stan's hand, spilling his seed all over himself. Dazed, weary, he barely heard the guttural grunt Stan let out as he came between his legs, though he did sense, instantly, that everything down there was uncomfortably slick and sticky now. It made his old compulsions for cleanliness come back tenfold, and he desperately wanted to get up and find a rag to clean himself with, but Stan was still on top of him, limp and heavy.

Stan rolled off of him, draping his arm across Kyle's chest, and curled up against his side. "You can do me, if you want," he murmured. "Unless you just want to sleep now."

Kyle pursed his lips, nostrils flaring. Didn't Stan know him well enough by now to know he wouldn't want to take an active role? Let alone repeat whatever the hell they'd just done? He wanted to bark back a caustic retort, but as much as Stan's obliviousness aggravated him, he didn't have the energy, or perhaps the audacity, to be so cruel. "Could you just get me a towel or something?" he finally managed to say.

"Yeah, of course," Stan said. He lazily kissed Kyle's shoulder, then after a moment, dragged himself from the bed and trudged out of the room.

Kyle lay still, staring at the ceiling, while he waited for Stan to come back. Though his body was tired, his mind was reeling with agitated, circular thoughts. How was it that he'd been one-upped in his knowledge of unnatural intercourse by a simple farm boy? He immediately felt badly for thinking of Stan as such; he was much more than a simple farm boy. Then again, Stan couldn't _really_ know that much about sex between men if he'd misinterpreted the reason why he'd bought the Vaseline. He should have been clearer with what he wanted, Kyle thought bitterly, though it also angered him that he apparently had to be.

Stan returned with a damp washcloth and crawled back up onto the bed. Before he could begin cleaning him, Kyle took the washcloth from his hands, perhaps a bit too abruptly. He felt a twinge of guilt for this, but he really could not deal with Stan tending to him in the overly caring way he was apt to. He hastily wiped up the agonizing stickiness between his legs, then pulled his underwear back on, trying very hard not to think about how badly he wanted a bath.

"You okay?" Stan asked hesitantly. He was sitting opposite Kyle on the bed, meek and reserved, his form hunched over.

Kyle bit his lip, his angry resolve nullified by guilt. "Yes, I'm fine," he said. He wished he were diplomatic enough to tell Stan the truth, that he was really quite upset, because whatever they'd just done was not at all what he'd had in mind. But that would mean having to explain what exactly it was that he'd had in mind, and after this breech of understanding, he was even less certain of how Stan would react. "Let's just go to bed," he said. "I'm tired." It was a lie. But he couldn't bear to speak to Stan any longer, overburdened with maintaining the pretense that everything was fine.

For what felt like hours, Kyle lay awake, exhausted but unable to turn off his thoughts. He was hungry, too, and wished he'd thought to buy a snack at the drugstore earlier. And though he tried not to, he couldn't help but think of home: wearing cotton pajamas to bed, having tea and mandelbrodt on the back porch while he read _The Republic_ or _Iphigenia in Tauris_ (he was convinced Orestes and Pylades shared a bond that was more than just brotherly), the long summer afternoons he'd spend at the library, his mother's home cooked varenyky. It made him sick with guilt to think of her, worse to imagine her distress that he had yet to come home. He realized then, miserably, that he wanted to go home, and badly. After he'd cried some silent, homesick tears into his pillow, he was finally able to sleep.

When Kyle woke late the next morning, he felt dazed with dehydration and acutely empty from hunger. Stan was not in the room, which unnerved him, and he quickly dressed and went downstairs, where he found him in the kitchen, washing dishes in a bucket of soapy water.

Stan briefly raised his head to look at Kyle, then quickly turned his focus back to his work. He was wearing his eye patch, which bothered Kyle for some reason. "These're all clean," he said, gesturing with his elbow to the glasses at his right. "There's a bucket of fresh water on the counter."

"Oh. Um, thanks." He picked up a glass and went over to the bucket on the counter behind Stan. The water was sort of cloudy. "Where is this water from?" he asked tentatively.

"The well," Stan responded.

That seemed safe enough, Kyle decided, and he dunked the glass into the bucket. The water was lukewarm, but tasted fine, and he downed two full glasses. He fiddled with his empty glass for a moment, disquieted by the uncomfortable silence between them. "So, um, where are Hack and Mole?" he asked.

"Went to town to find work."

"Ah."

More silence.

"Sorry I woke up so late," Kyle murmured.

"S'fine," Stan said, although his assurance was duly unconvincing, almost sarcastic, and Kyle instantly regretted his apology. "We'll catch up with 'em later."

They went into town for breakfast shortly thereafter. Neither of them spoke much. It was clear now that Stan was aware that last night had been a disaster, and was accordingly acting childishly distant and curt towards Kyle, as if it were _his_ fault that Stan failed to understand what unnatural intercourse was actually about. He wanted to be angry on principle, but the sun was hot, beating over his head, and the only energy he had was to keep walking, and to sweat.

When they arrived at the small tavern in the dumpier part of Ogden, Kyle had never been more relieved to see Hack and Mole. Hack beamed when he noticed them and promptly waved them over to their table. "Got jobs lined up for us at that farm from last year," he said. "We start the day after tomorrow. Wheat ain't fully ripe yet."

"Oh, good," Stan said. "Sorry we made ya go in our stead." Kyle couldn't help but interpret this as a personal jibe. He scooted his chair away from him a bit.

Hack shrugged. "Don't matter none. Guess you two needed yer rest, huh?" He said it casually, but there was an annoying glint in his eye.

"Uh, yeah," Stan said. He cleared his throat. "So, we got header crew again? I don't imagine you were lucky enough to snag us some thresher jobs, were ya?"

"They got a crew contracted already," Hack replied. "Makes sense with it bein' such a big farm and all."

"Yeah. Well, I'm fine with header crew," Stan said.

"Me too," Kyle said, very deliberately, shooting a pointed glance at Stan. Although he'd been hoping for a thresher job, he was determined to prove to Stan, to all of them, that he was just as capable of hard labor as they were. He wasn't a spineless city slicker who could only bear leisurely chucking wheat into a thresher feeder. Not anymore, anyway.

Stan and Hack were the only ones who really spoke at lunch, discussing which routes they'd catch out to follow the wheat harvest, which was boring. Kyle didn't bother piping up with comments as he usually did when he felt excluded by their conversation, he just glowered covertly, thinking about last night, eying Stan with unnoticed disdain once in a while. Mole was characteristically silent (except his loud chewing), and as much as he loathed the wild man, Kyle wished he were more verbal than the occasional grunt so he could strum up some conversation with him, if only so Stan would notice.

After lunch, Stan proposed they get supplies for the house. "Just some substantials for the week. Forty-fives, cereal, java, that kinda stuff."

"Always thinkin' ahead, huh?" Hack said. He dug a cigarette out of his back pocket and lit it with a match. "Not a bad idea though. Saw there's a general store o'er there."

Kyle watched the three of them head down the road, unable to make himself follow them. He didn't want to spend the afternoon biting his tongue to keep from snapping at Stan, or hearing Hack's aggravating drawl, or trying to keep up with their ridiculous jargon.

Stan turned his head over his shoulder and looked at him strangely.

"Handle? You comin'?" Hack asked.

"I'm ah –" Kyle wanted to say no, but it's not like he had anywhere else to go. And if he loitered around Ogden by himself for a while, he didn't know how he'd catch up them again. "Y-yeah," he finally responded, slowing trudging forward.

At the general store, which was small but well-stocked, Hack and Stan went through a list of groceries to the storekeeper. Kyle thought about buying a postcard to send to his mother, but realized this was a stupid idea since it would be postmarked from Ogden, Texas. He'd have to think of something else. Maybe if he called during the day, his mother would be out shopping (or doing whatever it was that she did all day), and he'd be able to leave a message with one of the maids. But did the maids answer the phone? He couldn't remember; he couldn't even remember any of their names right now.

The cost of the food totaled seven dollars, which they split amongst the four of them. Then, they decided – that is, Hack proposed and Stan agreed – to head back the house. The walk back was terrible: the sun hung hot and burning in the cloudless sky, the fields swarmed with buzzing insects, and worst of all, Kyle had to pee.

When they finally made it to the house (which looked less creepy, but more morose, in broad daylight, as if it knew it had been abandoned), Kyle was able to slip away while Hack, Stan and Mole unpacked the groceries. He had to walk out a fair bit from the house to find a sufficiently wooded area, and he surveyed his surroundings carefully to make sure he was alone before he dared unzip his fly.

Despite how humid it was, he took his time walking to the house, not at all eager to get back. Maybe he'd just step in to grab his diary and find some shady spot where he could try to write. However, he feared that inscribing his frustrations would exacerbate them, and besides, he didn't really have the energy or desire. A nap, actually, sounded ideal. He just hoped he could sleep in this heat.

Kyle went around the house to go in through the front door, and he was about to go upstairs when he heard what sounded like arguing in the kitchen.

"I knew you two were up to somethin' in New Or'lins," Stan said, his voice thick with annoyance. "Jesus Christ, have you really been carrying all this around with you the whole time?"

"Why're ya so hooty?" This was Hack's voice. "I was just askin' outta courtesy."

"You know I don't want any!" Stan snapped back. "And I don't want you askin' Handle, either," he added darkly.

At the mention of his nickname, Kyle was even more curious to know what was going on, so he slowly stepped back to the door, opened and shut it very loudly, then strolled into the kitchen as nonchalantly as possible. In the middle of the kitchen table was a pile of little baggies filled with what appeared to be confectioner's sugar.

Stan was taken aback by his entrance. "Ky –" He cut himself off, grimaced, and then asked, "Where were you?"

"Taking a piss," he answered coolly, although it unnerved him to speak so crudely, especially about his own bodily functions. "Sorry I didn't inform you."

Hack and Mole both snorted at this. Stan narrowed his eye, his expression hard. He huffed, his nostrils flaring, then, between clenched teeth, muttered to Kyle, "I need to talk to you. Alone."

"Why, so you can tell me what I'm not allowed to do?" Kyle said. Truly irritated now, he added, "I'm not a child, _Swarm_ , and if I wanted someone to boss me around, I'd just go back home."

Stan was fuming, and it pleased Kyle immensely to see that he was able to get under his skin. Brusquely, Stan stomped past Kyle and out of the kitchen, his footsteps making the whole house shudder as he clomped up the stairs. He slammed the door shut, making dust sprinkle down from the ceiling in the kitchen.

Hack rolled his eyes. "Sheesh. He's always gotta ruin the fun."

"No kidding," Kyle commented.

"So we still doin' some of this or what?" Mole said gruffly, and Kyle nearly jumped at the sound of his voice. He had forgotten he was here.

"Yeah. We gotta set a limit though." Hack sat down at the kitchen table and picked up one of the bags, analyzing it. "Let's see how long one gram'll last us. I don't wanna blast through all this." He untied the bag and dumped its contents on the table. "You stayin', Handle?"

"Um. Yeah." Kyle pulled out a chair and sat opposite Hack. He was fairly certain now that the white powder wasn't sugar, but he was reluctant to ask what it actually was. Hoping to get the answer indirectly, he asked Hack, "Why was he so mad?"

"He came down off this stuff hard once, swore he'd never touch it again," Hack said. He had procured a razor blade from somewhere and was splitting the powder into parallel lines.

Kyle theorized it must be some kind of drug. Dope? Is this what dope looked like?

"You done coke before, Handle?" Hack asked as he neatened up the lines.

Oh, cocaine. That didn't seem too bad, then. It was in medicine, after all. Kyle considered lying, but decided to admit, "Not like this, no."

Hack looked up at him and grinned. "You're in for some fun then."

Nervously, Kyle smiled back.

"Now let's see if I got a dollar in here," Hack said, digging in his pockets. "Ah, here we go." He pulled out a crumpled one dollar bill and proceeded to flatten it out on the table with the edge of his hand. "This ain't gonna work. Need a stiffer one. Hmm. Hey, Mole, you got a nicer lookin' note?"

Mole grunted, but obliged, looking through his own pockets. Kyle had at least a dozen ones in his wallet, but he was hesitant to open up his wallet in front of Hack and Mole, as it was quite literally stuffed with cash. Then he remembered that it was Stan who had told him to be wary of letting other people know he had money on him, and he felt hateful towards him all over again. Defiantly, Kyle got out his wallet, pulled out three crisp bills, and set them on the table.

"Oh, nice. One for each of us," Hack said gleefully. He took a bill and rolled it into a tight cylinder. Mumbling to himself, Mole finally joined them at the table and did likewise. Kyle quickly followed suit and did the same with his bill before they could notice him studying their rolling technique. While he had no clue what they'd be doing with rolled up dollar bills, he figured he'd be able to save himself from embarrassment so long as he copied what Hack and Mole did. He just hoped they wouldn't be cramming the coke into the little rolls and then smoking them. The thought of destroying money made him cringe.

"Now," Hack said, suddenly diplomatic. "We ain't turnin' into no snowbirds, ya hear?" He was looked at Mole as he said this, who evaded his gaze. "We'll be able to make a nice stake for ourselves this summer if we don't get too nutty with this stuff."

"Alright, _Pa_ ," Mole muttered, and Kyle almost laughed at this, but Hack looked seriously offended.

"I'm just sayin'," Hack grumbled. Pointing a finger at Mole, he said, "And you _wish_ you –" He suddenly cut himself off.

"I wish I what?" Mole asked sternly.

"Nothin'. I didn't say nothin'," Hack said, irritated. "Let's just have a nice afternoon. Fer chrissake…"

Hack took his rolled up dollar bill, and bafflingly, stuck it into his nostril. Then, even more startling, while still holding the bill just inside his nose, he leaned over the table, touched the bottom of the bill to the end of a line, then slowly moved to the right as he sucked up the white powder up through his nose. He leaned back and shook his head side to side very quickly, scrunching his face up, then finally exhaled, his lips flapping around in a ridiculous manner. "Yeah, gonna be feelin' that alright." He sniffed a few times, then got up to give Mole his seat.

As Kyle watched Mole repeat the same nostril-vacuuming process Hack had done, he got increasingly apprehensive about having to do it himself. He worried about inhaling the powder without coughing or gagging and inevitably making a fool of himself. But he didn't have time to fret about this much more, because Mole was already finished. Feeling a trickle of sweat drip down the side of his face, Kyle pushed his chair out and stood up, stupidly bumped into the side of the table, then took a seat in front of the remaining four lines.

He took his dollar bill and carefully placed it inside his right nostril, staring at the line he was about to inhale into his…lungs? sinuses? brain? Hesitating, he tried to figure this out. Then, realizing he was simply delaying and any second now Hack and Mole might notice, he panicked and sucked up the entire line of cocaine through his nose. It wasn't as difficult as he had feared. It did burn, though, which took him by surprise, and he squeezed the bridge of his nose, massaging it. Sitting very still, he took a few deep breaths. The back of his throat was a little scratchy and tingly, but otherwise, he felt fine.

"Handle, Handle!" Hack said excitedly, leaning in very close to his face. "You're gonna love this shit. You're gonna love it. Just wait. Just give it a minute. Then you're gonna feel it." He grinned wider and patted Kyle on the shoulder. And again. And again. And again.

Hack's hand remained on his shoulder, hot and annoying, and Kyle brushed it away, irritated by the contact. "Okay, okay," he said. "Jeez."

Within a few seconds, Kyle felt his heart begin to pump faster. Hack and Mole were both talking, loudly, and Kyle tried to block them out, concentrating on how his body was reacting to the drug. His nose was dripping now, and he felt somewhat warmer, his limbs tingling slightly. He got up to make sure he could still walk, circling the tiny kitchen a few times as he wiped at his nose with his initialed handkerchief.

"Shit, I fuckin' love this shit," Mole said. It was the first time Kyle had heard him speak levelly, as if he were an actual human being.

"I know, I know, I know," Hack responded, beaming. He then sniffed loudly and threw his head back, rolling his shoulders, the expression on his face completely blissed-out.

Kyle leaned against the kitchen counter, watching them bitterly and feeling left out. How long would it be until he got all pepped up, too? How long had it been since he'd sucked that cocaine up his nose? Three, four minutes? Frustrated, he picked at his lip, peeling the dried out skin off in satisfyingly-long pieces. He was sweating a lot now, and he wanted to take off his shirt, but he wouldn't dare it with Hack and Mole here to gawk at his goofy pink nipples.

He stared at the three lines of white powder left on the table. Maybe one line wasn't enough. Maybe he needed to do a little more for his body to feel the effects. Like half of a second line. Or three fifths of a second line. Three fifths sounded good. Watching Hack and Mole out of the corner of his eye, Kyle crept over to the table, dug the rolled up dollar bill out of his pocket, retightened it, and leaned over to suck more cocaine up his nose. Three fifths of the way down the line, he paused, wondering if he should stop, but then decided two more fifths couldn't hurt, and he might as well finish what he'd started. It burned more than the first time, but the sensation was tolerable, and he staggered back to where he'd been standing, relieved that Hack and Mole were all but oblivious to his presence, shouting at each other with unnerving excitement.

Exactly twenty-two seconds later (he counted), he started to feel it. Not all at once, but at a comfortable level of build-up, he began to feel utterly, indescribably, wonderful. He was still very hot, his nose was still dripping, and his heart was still pounding, and although he was conscious of all that, it didn't bother him at all: he was so incredibly _happy_ , the happiest he'd ever been in his entire life. It was a pure, bubbling happiness, blossoming and intensifying in his body, as if there were jubilant choirs inside him, shouting out with joy to the tune of his racing heartbeat.

He had to share this with Stan! Kyle raced out of the kitchen, empowered by his own overwhelming energy, but then, remembering he was supposed to still be angry with him, he halted in the middle of the dining room, nearly falling on his face. What had they argued about, again? Oh, the catastrophe of last night, of course. He picked at his lip, his brain teeming with thousands of viable solutions to their argument. The best of his brilliant answers was also the simplest: all he had to do was clearly explain the practical dynamics of unnatural intercourse. If Stan were truly inverted (of which Kyle was sure of), there was no way he _wouldn't_ be on board with engaging in the most sacred of intimate acts. Easy as pie! Why hadn't he thought of that before?

Bolting out of the dining room, Kyle turned on a sharp pivot to hurry up the steps. His mind and his body felt so powerful, everything working in sync. Then, jarringly, he collided into something obtrusive and unexpected on the stairs, and the glorious physiological seamlessness fell into temporary disorder.

To Kyle's extreme delight, the universe had tossed him right into Stan's lap. "Oh, Stan, Stan!" he cried, clinging to him, oblivious to Stan's bewilderment. "I've missed you terribly."

"Kyle – You didn't – You did, didn't you?" Stan said. Frustrated, he struggled to stand on the steps, but Kyle was still firmly attached to him.

"I did what?" Kyle asked. Reluctantly, he loosened his full-body grip on Stan and stood next to him, pressing his ear against his shoulder.

"Coke!" Stan practically shouted, and Kyle instantly stepped away from him, deeply annoyed.

"No, no! I mean, I did, but – Jesus, Stan, I feel fucking amazing! So _excuse me_ for wanting to tell you about it." He folded his arms over his chest, feeling his heart beating oppressively fast.

Stan pinched the bridge of his nose, groaning. "Alright, Kyle, _fine._ But you realize you're only gonna feel like this for so long, right? You gotta come down at some point."

Scoffing, Kyle retorted, "What're you talking about?"

"You're gonna crash! And then you're gonna be miserable!"

This seemed preposterous, but logically, it made sense. However, it was a non-issue at this point, because every cell in Kyle's body was fired up, crackling with energy he never knew he had, and he'd be damned if he was going to waste it arguing with Stan. But then again, one last appeal couldn't hurt. "Can you _please_ just do some? One line, maybe?" Kyle pleaded, planting his hands on Stan's stiff shoulders. "Please? Please, Stan, please? For me?" He batted his eyelashes for extra effect.

"No!" Stan bellowed. The anger in his voice shot through Kyle's skull, threatening to turn his elation into curdling fury.

"Fine!" Kyle shouted back, determined to be even louder. He soared down the steps, desperate to be away from Stan's foul mood and the dimness of the house, believing that the simplicity of sunshine would recalibrate his being.

He burst through front door and was met with the most exhilarating light. The sun was wild and glorious, breathing its strength into his veins as he ran through the fields. He threw his head back, flinging his arms out at his sides, envisioning himself a newborn phoenix, free from the ashen gloom of the house and remade by the fiery warmth of the hot Texan air. Faster and faster he ran, imagining that at any moment he would take off into the sky.

Eventually, he slowed down. He was drenched with sweat, his clothes sticking to him, and he squirmed out of his dress shirt, not caring that he ripped off some buttons in the process. Just for a minute, just to catch his breath, he plopped down on the ground, tall grasses cushioning his body against the earth. His nose was still dripping, and though his mouth felt oddly numb, he could tell he was parched. He thought of the pool at the La Salle Hotel, and wanted more than anything to dive into its cool, crystal-clear waters. He'd move beneath the surface with the high-speed agility of a dolphin, the sea's finest creature. No, no, not a dolphin, he thought, recalling Stan's stupid obsession with the constellation. Dolphins were naïve and flippant, infesting the ocean with their glib giggling gurgles. They were exactly the type who would dumbly misinterpret something screamingly obvious right in front of their perfect noses.

Land was preferable, anyway. He spread out on top of the grass, feeling comfortably grounded. He could be a fox. A cunning, swift forest-dweller with a silky crimson coat. His skill and his wits would be what got him out of binds, or convinced the more empty-headed creatures of the forest to do his bidding for him. Oh, it was simply marvelous being a fox. He flopped onto his stomach and crouched in hiding beneath the tall grasses, pretending a dim-witted mole was sniffing around just ahead, stupidly waiting for him to sink his sharp teeth into its flesh.

A distant shout ripped Kyle from his anthropomorphic ideations. It sounded suspiciously like Stan, and he groaned, burrowing deeper into the grass, hoping to evade discovery. He lifted his head just enough to peer down the field and saw Stan running exasperatedly, stopping every few seconds to yell, "Kyle! Kyle! Where are you? Kyle!" He sounded legitimately panicked, which made Kyle nervous, and all the more reluctant to be found.

Stan's shouts were getting closer, and Kyle felt like he was going to die from how fast his heart was pounding in his chest. He was cornered. The fox was guilty, and the gingerbread man was dead-set on revenge. Although he may have outwitted the gingerbread man before, the crazed thing could just remake himself from fresh dough, hop out of the oven, and go after the poor fox again. He fretted, imagining blazing red gum-drop eyes that wanted to suck the soul out of his body.

Suddenly, an arm was on his back. He jerked away, panicking. "Kyle! What the hell?" the gingerbread man said.

"You won't catch me so easily," the fox growled. He narrowed his eyes and made a menacing guttural sound in the back of his throat.

"What? I'm not – Jesus, Kyle, are you okay?" The gingerbread man half-sobbed this, and Kyle, not the fox, realized this wasn't a game. He stared dumbstruck, watching Stan wipe his eye with his palm.

"What? Yeah, I'm fine," Kyle said, forcing himself to speak very softly. He touched Stan's arm with a shaking hand, disturbed that the panic in his face did not lessen.

"Okay," Stan said. He seemed unconvinced, so Kyle got up and jogged around in circles a few times.

"See, totally fine!" Kyle said.

His eyes shut tight, Stan dragged his palm down his face. Kyle watched his Adam's apple bob as he swallowed. He wanted to lick it. So he did. The sweat on Stan's neck tasted almost exotic on his dried tongue. "What are you doing?" Stan asked tiredly.

"Nothing. I'm just – thirsty," Kyle murmured, pulling away. Although the dryness in his mouth was becoming increasingly distracting, he needed a sweat-slicked Stan, not well water, to quench his truer thirst.

"Let's go get you some water then," Stan said. There was a trace of annoyance in his voice that felt crushing to Kyle. He ought to have stomped off, but he was suddenly very tired, his limbs heavy and weight-like. In an instant, everything felt so, so wrong: the wonderful elation of only moments ago had starkly shifted into crippling agony. Distantly, he recalled Stan's warning that he would eventually come down from the drug. But he hadn't known it would be like this. He never could've imagined it would be this drastic, or this harrowing.

He felt a hand on his shoulder. "You said you were thirsty, right? Kyle?"

"I – I don't know," he replied, mumbling. He dropped to his knees and let himself fall sideways onto the ground. Stan's anxious voice rang hard in his ears, but Kyle did not hear his words. As he lay in the dirt, watching the alarm in Stan's face twist into fear, it was like he was peering into an unreachable reality a thousand times more dynamic than his own, the same way he felt when he went to see moving picture stories at the nickelodeon.

Annoyingly, Stan was trying to hoist him up. "Leave me be. Let me die here," Kyle muttered. "Let the vultures pick away at me."

"Kyle, please, just – C'mon," Stan pleaded. "Let's get back to the house."

Walking very slowly, Kyle let Stan hold his hand as they trudged through the fields. Not only in body, but also in mind and spirit, he was thoroughly dehydrated, sapped dry of his dreams, emotions, and intellect. The coke made them reach their ultimate potential, and then, complimentarily, robbed them from him in entirety. He was nothingness, and yet, in the corporeal sense, he still existed. His punishment, he knew, as deemed by cosmic law, was to bear the torment of living as a hollowed-out vessel, eternally nostalgic for respiratory consciousness. He wanted to die.

Stan squeezed his hand. "You'll be okay," he said. "You just need to sleep it off. And drink a lot of water."

The former sounded impossible, the latter reasonable, necessary, though only to sustain the prison that was his body. If he had any inclination for speech, he would've told Stan to shut up.

Kyle welcomed the grim darkness of the house. Stan led him into the kitchen and had him sit at the table, saying he'd be back in a minute with water. The mountain of cocaine-filled baggies was gone, the only evidence remaining some traces of white powder where Hack had cut the lines. Ordinarily, Hack would be the first person Kyle would've blamed for how miserable he felt right now, but in his current state, he could only blame himself. He put his face in his hands, wracked with regret and self-hatred. The tears came easily. He did not sob, simply sat unmoving at the kitchen table, collecting his tears in his hands.

The kitchen door creaked open and rattled shut. Stan's footsteps, the sounds of his movements when he came back inside, and the shallow huffing of his breathing did not fill Kyle with the security of knowing he was nearby. His presence felt painful, somehow. However, Stan's leaving him horrified him just as much as being left alone. Kyle thought again of his reckless defiance to Stan's warning. He didn't deserve to be taken care of. He didn't deserve _him_.

There was a soft clink as a glass of water was set in front of him. "Please drink," Stan said. His voice was so pleading, the worry so apparent in his face, that tears began to stream anew from Kyle's eyes. He didn't try to stop them.

"Shh, shhh, it's okay," Stan said, crouching down to caress Kyle's face, wiping the tears away for him. He pressed a long kiss to his forehead. "It's okay, you'll be okay."

Kyle leaned into the touch, yearning for Stan to erase his despair, but knowing he couldn't. "I won't be. You don't understand."

Frowning, Stan pulled out a chair – to Kyle's discomfort, the same one where they'd done the lines earlier – and sat down. He laced his fingers between Kyle's limp, disinterested ones, and said, "No, I do. I know how you feel right now. Like nothing matters. Like you'll never be happy again. But it'll go away. I promise."

That's exactly what it felt like. However, it was little consolation to know that Stan sympathized; the crash after the high was so consuming that it was hard to take comfort in the compassion Stan so selflessly gave to him, let alone be grateful for it. And although he knew Stan wouldn't lie to him, Kyle simply could not believe that this wouldn't last forever. There was no end to this, and he knew it. He stared at the glass of cloudy water on the table, thinking maybe there was well-bacteria in it that could kill him. He drank it slowly, in careful, germ-ridden mouthfuls. Then, he closed his eyes and concentrated on willing the bacteria to eat away at his insides. Nothing happened, of course, and he imagined God laughing at him for trying to escape his pathological castigation.

He felt Stan's hand on his forehead, and when he realized he was checking for a fever, just as his mother did when he was sick, Kyle's eyes began to water again. "Do you think you can drink another glass?" Stan asked.

"I guess."

Kyle drank a second glass, and then three quarters of a third, realizing how thirsty he was as he continued to drink. This seemed to allay Stan, and Kyle couldn't tell if he was truly relieved by this or simply deluding himself of the fact, for relief at the absolvent of another's concerns was fundamentally human, and he was in no position to believe that he was returning to his former self any time soon, if ever.

"I was so scared when you ran off," Stan said quietly.

Not looking at him, Kyle murmured, "I'm sorry."

"No, it's okay. It's fine now."

"Nothing is fine," Kyle said bitterly. "I'm in hell."

Stan looked like he might cry, which made Kyle uncomfortable. "It'll be okay," he said for what felt like the thirtieth time. "Do you want to go lie down?"

"I guess." With inordinate difficulty, Kyle willed himself to get up. He realized then that he was filthy, covered in dust and dirt and some stray pieces of broken grass. On one hand, he was apathetic, but on the other, more insistent one, he badly wished he could just snap his fingers and be clean; the idea of trying to wash himself with a damp rag seemed like the worst thing in the world. He sat back down again and covered his face with his hands, groaning miserably.

Necessarily, Stan pestered him about it. "Kyle? What's wrong? Are you okay?"

"I need a bath," Kyle grunted.

"Oh… Well, um, if you want, I could get you a bucket of soapy water and a washcloth," Stan murmured, trailing off.

"I can't do it."

"I can do it."

"Fine."

Stan swallowed audibly. "Um. Be right back then." He slipped out of the kitchen into the backyard.

Kyle put his head on the kitchen table and tried to tolerate how horrible he felt. The air in the kitchen was stifling, and time seemed to hang suspended in its dreary haze, too heavy and sluggish to accelerate. In each breath his took, he absorbed the thick nothingness of time and space into his body, metaphysically suffocating himself.

The kitchen door clattered shut when Stan came back inside, penetrating the sedative void of the room. He lifted a heavy bucket to the kitchen table with a reverberating thud. "Do you want to go upstairs?" he asked. "In case Hack and Mole come back?"

"Sure," Kyle said. Although he recognized this was a good idea, it meant he would have to climb up the steps, which seemed daunting when just getting out of this chair was a strain. Listlessly, he followed Stan into the dining room, then upstairs, trudging laboriously up each step. Once in their room, he plopped down on top of the trunk at the foot of their bed, thoroughly exhausted.

Stan eased the bucket onto the floor in front of him and then rummaged throughout the room, procuring a frayed washcloth and a bar of soap. After rolling up his sleeves, he knelt on the floor and dutifully lathered up the washcloth, repeatedly dunking it into the bucket until the water was white and soapy. Then, hesitantly, he looked up at Kyle. "Are you gonna take off your pants?"

Kyle murmured unintelligibly, shaking his head. "You do it."

Without speaking, Stan did so, yanking Kyle's slacks and underwear down with determined care. He rolled them into a ball and pushed them aside, saying something about doing laundry at the jungle later.

The hard wood on his naked rear, Kyle sat motionless, aching and bitter in the knowledge that if it weren't for his numbing apathy, this situation would be delightfully sexual. He eyed the crotch of Stan's pants as he began to drag the cool washcloth over his skin and was further depressed to see the outline of his hard cock. Unable to look at what had been one of the greatest joys of his former happy existence, Kyle shut his eyes and pretended it was some anonymous entity washing him, someone who didn't care about him like Stan did.

This was no longer possible when the washcloth progressed lower, over his cock and between his legs. When Kyle cracked his eyes open to see a dark flush to Stan's cheeks, he was overwhelmed with fresh grief. "I'm sorry," he said, sniffing. "I'm so sorry. I'm so stupid." With the last bit of strength left in his body, he managed to sob.

"Shh, Kyle, no – You're not stupid," Stan said, planting delicate kisses on his clean face, brushing his curls away with damp fingers. "And you don't have to apologize."

"Yes I do," Kyle muttered in defeat. "I just do."

Stan let out a weary sigh. "Okay."

Although he was still undeniably morose, Kyle did feel better once he was clean. He let the warm air dry his skin while Stan organized the room, wringing the washcloth out and taking the soapy water downstairs. Cognitively, at least, he was grateful for Stan, for everything Stan was doing to take care of him, especially when he'd been so goddamn stupid, but emotionally, it was very taxing trying to conjure up the same response.

He spent the rest of the afternoon lying in bed. Thankfully, Stan stayed with him, silently curled up on his side, pressing his forehead into Kyle's shoulder or lightly stroking his arm with the back of his fingers. The slowness of time returned and inundated Kyle with its opaqueness, preventing him from falling asleep. When the orange sunlight began to fade from the room, Stan went to fetch some food from the kitchen. Kyle went with him, not only because he was reluctant to be alone, but also because he had had to pee for the past twenty minutes.

On the way down the steps, they heard sporadic murmurings in the parlor: Hack and Mole had returned at some point and were sprawled out on the rickety love seats, both of them egregiously filthy and sweaty. The scene easily lent itself to hate, and Kyle wished badly that he cared enough to abhor them.

Shaking his head, Stan headed straight to the kitchen to put something of a meal together. Kyle followed, then tiredly slipped outside to pee right next to the house, not even caring if Stan was able to hear his pee stream from inside. He didn't wash his hands afterward, either, but then he'd been making a habit of that for days now.

They ate crackers and beef jerky in their room. Stan drank some cheap looking alcohol that smelled almost as potent as rubbing alcohol, and while Kyle thought of drinking some so he could get sleepy, the smell was too intense for him to even imagine consuming. Neither of them speaking, they sat very close, thighs touching. The quiet was lulling and stupefying, a drowsier manifestation of the pervasive standstill of time, undeterred by the occasional thud downstairs or the caw of some anxious bird.

That night, when Kyle finally slept, he dreamed of an underworld of watery shadows and cold rivers. He let the waters carry him, neither knowing nor trusting their direction. At once, there was a surge of movement, a volt of thought. Defying the ancient stagnancy, the current had hastened, and however simple it was, his realization of this change was damning, revolutionary, brazen in its destruction of one hundred vacuous years. At the peak of velocity, he remembered fear. The waters slowed, as if the scope of his being, having returned to sensuality, could speak to them.

He was lifted onto a beach with sands so white his vision left him before it fully came back. Blinking frantically, he looked beyond the burning brightness, into the dark waves from whence he came. A sleek, gray tail waved at him. Moving his hand like a pendulum, he waved back.


	5. Chapter 5

Someone's voice, very near, was calling him from very far away. It chipped away at the easy darkness, rousing Kyle with gentle insistence: "Kyle, Kyle, wake up."

No, not yet.

"It's almost two in the afternoon."

He groaned and squeezed his eyes shut.

"We brought some bread and sausage back from the jungle."

He sensed his mouth was dry, and then, that his stomach was empty.

"Kyle? Do you feel okay?" This time, Kyle let Stan's voice open his eyes. His face – vaguely sweaty, clean shaven, painfully beautiful – kept him from wanting to close them again.

"Yeah. Just tired," Kyle murmured. He realized, distantly, that the agony from last night he had been certain would never leave was gone. The relief was immense, then forgotten.

Stan's brow tented slightly. "We brought back coffee, too."

Alright, but later. "Get in bed with me? Please?" Kyle mustered the strength to scoot over and lift up the blankets, aching to feel Stan's body press up against his.

Stan climbed into bed and Kyle sunk into his arms. He breathed in his scent, heavy and masculine, and let it cloud the thoughts that his mind wanted to form. The drowsiness that still lingered and the security of their limbs tangling together allowed Kyle a few moments of thoughtless peace. That was, until he felt Stan poking against his thigh, and he remembered their failed attempt at intercourse the other day. He stopped himself from shifting away – what good had skirting around the truth done him? It had led him to do something as stupid as snorting cocaine, apparently.

Saying things openly was hard though. He leaned back so he could look at Stan's face. The eye patch was lopsided, and Kyle tentatively removed it, bracing himself before blue eyes. "What's wrong?" Stan asked. He said it so gently Kyle had to look away. Then, he was able to say it: "I was so mad at you the other day."

Stan didn't say anything for a moment. Kyle peered at him, and upon seeing the worry in his face, he opened his mouth, ready to apologize. But before he had the chance, Stan finally spoke, his words very careful. "Are you still mad?" he asked.

"Well. No. Not mad, exactly," Kyle said. He bit his lip hard, then ran his tongue over it, hesitating.

Stan pulled himself away. Dejectedly, he muttered, "I guess I shouldn'ta been so up in your business. Sorry."

In panic, Kyle grabbed Stan's arm, hating himself that he could only ever make things worse. "No, it – it wasn't that."

Stan raised his eyebrows. "What was it then?" He sounded tired, which first made Kyle feel guilty, then stupid. Worse than the inflection of his voice, however, was the directness of his question.

Put on the spot, Kyle's first impulse was to lie. As he tried to come up with a good fib, he made the mistake of looking Stan in the eye, and then the truth sputtered from his mouth. "I was mad because of the other day! That's not how it was supposed to be! I – I wanted to do the _real thing!_ " He could feel his face turning red, burning him with humiliation. It was too much to watch Stan piece this together. Kyle buried his face in the pillow, groaning.

"But didn't we – ? I mean, I thought that was what you wanted," Stan said, trailing off.

If Kyle didn't know Stan like he did, he would've thought he was being played a fool. Incredulous, he turned to gape at him, and saw that his confusion was sincere. "I wanted –" Kyle began, pausing to deliberate the least embarrassing choice of words before deciding on simple clarity, embarrassment be damned, "I wanted us to have intercourse."

Stan's eyes got big and Kyle felt his shame conflate under inspection. "I didn't think that was something that, um, guys who were in love did." He said the last part very quietly, turning his gaze down to his hands.

"What? Why?" Kyle asked, suddenly indignant.

Stan raised his head and regarded Kyle with bewilderment. "Because that's what those pervert 'bos do to boys."

Such an explanation left Kyle speechless. It made him want to be sick, thinking of those dirty old "wolves" and "jockers" using the thing he idealized so much as a source of power and control. It made him want to cry, knowing that this was the context Stan had for unnatural intercourse. "That isn't right," he finally managed to choke out. "They're tainting it."

"How? It's already such a violent thing to begin with – "

Kyle's jaw dropped. " _Violent!?_ It's not violent! It's – it's – " He had wanted to say "beautiful," but the anger and shock had pooled in his mouth and denied him the use of such idyllic words. Desperate to defend himself, he added, "The Greeks did it, for God's sake!"

"Kyle, I – " He cut himself off and frowned. "I don't know. I just – I need a smoke," Stan said, leaving the bed. This was the boiling point for Kyle: he wanted to smack the apologetic look Stan gave him right off his face. Instead, he hopped out of bed, too, staring Stan down (although he was actually staring him _up,_ as Stan was at least three inches taller, something Kyle found himself hating for the very first time.)

"So now _you're_ mad?" Kyle demanded.

"No! Jesus! I just need to think!" Stan retorted.

Kyle crossed his arms over his chest and turned away from him. "Fine. But remember, _you're_ the one who wanted to know why I was mad. So it's hardly fair of you to get all steamed up over it."

"Jesus Christ," Stan cursed between gritted teeth. He stomped out the door without another word. The reverberations of his footsteps as he trudged down the steps shook the house, agitating Kyle so much he grabbed the closest thing in reach and threw it against the wall. The _thwack_ the Farmer's Almanac made was grossly unsatisfying. He picked up the kerosene lamp and was ready to chuck it before reason got the better of him, and he set it back down on the nightstand.

Sweaty and huffing, he resorted to pacing the room, occasionally kicking the bed frame and the dresser, though not as hard as he really wanted to. Just as he was about to kick the flimsy-looking chair in the corner, he caught himself, at which point he noticed it was _his_ shirt hanging over the chair. And as a matter of fact, both pairs of his pants were here, too, nicely folded on the seat. At the bottom of the pile were his silk pajamas, slightly damp, but very fresh-smelling. All of his clothes had been laundered.

Stan. Stan had washed his clothes for him.

The guilt was so overwhelming he dropped to his knees, clutching the clean pajamas as he tried to squeeze out a tear or two. He had to get it together. If he couldn't keep his temper in check, he was going to lose the one good thing he had. He had to stop being so goddamn self-centered. All he did was take, take, take, and then ask for more. He had to think about Stan.

Poor Stan. How could Kyle blame him for thinking the way he did? In this warped world where they had found each other, what men did behind closed doors wasn't about love, it was about violence and exploitation. It occurred to him then that Stan, too, only wanted to keep what they had pure. The details of the dissimilar contexts they both had regarding the nature of their relationship (did Kyle dare use such a conventional word?) were simply red herrings that had distracted Kyle from seeing this.

Keeping what they had pure in an impure world was like picking the raisins out of kugel: one oversight could ruin everything, but as long as they were meticulous, no disgusting raisins would spoil the sweetness. However – and this is where the metaphor failed – they had different opinions on what counted as impurities, and plainly, this was where the real problem arose. As neither of them wished to hurt the other, Stan was against unnatural intercourse _because_ he associated it with bodily assault. Kyle understood why now, but it still hurt him deeply, even if that hadn't been Stan's intention. This painful irony immediately called to mind something Kyle had nearly forgotten: Stan had killed someone, also without intending to. Kyle shook the thought away, sickened with himself for comparing these two very different situations. Furthermore, to consider their recent misunderstandings in this light would imply that Stan, despite his desire to be _good_ and do _good_ things, would always succumb to a deterministic fate that backfired on him. And Kyle didn't believe that.

Nor did he believe that he himself was guiltless. Sparing himself for once from his go-to method of verbally abusing himself, Kyle simply accepted his culpability. But this was not enough. As he dressed, buttoning up his shirt and tucking it in, he also determined he would apologize to Stan profusely and properly, and then, together, they would talk like adults and come to a common ground about what they would and would not do in bed.

Feeling good about this, Kyle tidied up the room a bit and then went downstairs. On his way out the back door, he saw, on the kitchen table, a plate of bread and sausage, and next to it, a glass of coffee, all laid forth especially for him. This time, Stan's silent kindness didn't wrack Kyle with guilt like it had with the clothes. The careful placement of the dish, the glass, the fork and knife, and the simple fact that Stan had thought to bring him back food, instead overwhelmed him with gratitude, making him wish that Stan would hurry back so he could kiss his face over and over and let his thankfulness be known. But he could wait. Stan needed time to think, and that was perfectly fine. Thinking levelly about conflict was how it was solved. Adding fuel to the fire was never conducive unless you wanted the destruction it wrought when it got out of hand. He'd have to write that one in his diary. It was brilliant, so keenly self-aware.

After he relieved himself outside, Kyle sat down to eat. He realized that he was sitting in the same chair where he had done coke yesterday. This made him want to scoff at the fact that last night he'd been so convinced the horrible comedown was going to last forever. He felt generally okay now, albeit somewhat tired, as if he'd only slept six hours instead of more than twice that amount. The fatigue wasn't so bad though. Did he dare say that maybe it was even worth it? He looked down at the plate of food and imagined instead there was a fat line of coke in front of him. Worryingly, he began to salivate.

He didn't want to do cocaine again, but on the same token, he also really, really wanted to. He craved that top-of-the-world feeling again. The intensity of this desire made him nervous, and he was afraid that he had already become a snowbird, a drug addict. That was impossible though, he tried to assure himself. It's not as if snorting a little cocaine could eliminate all of his self-control. To be sure of this, he made a firm promise right then and there that he would _never_ do cocaine again, never so much as think about it again. Other things mattered too much.

So Kyle ate his breakfast (or was it technically lunch?) thinking about only one thing: what he would say when Stan came back. That is, how exactly he would word his apology. It was always embarrassing to admit fault, and Kyle didn't do it often. Apologizing, by simple definition, was extrinsic embarrassment, feeling inferior to another by some quality, in this case, rationale. The differing factor here was that this extrinsic embarrassment was social rather than physical. But damn it, if he could tolerate physical extrinsic embarrassment with Stan (and even kind of _enjoy_ it, oddly enough), he could and he _should_ face the social type head on.

Just then, he heard the front door open. Swallowing down the last of the syrupy-tasting coffee, he readied himself to face Stan, but then, horribly, he heard Hack's voice.

"Fuckin' shack fever," Hack drawled. "I'm gonna go take a nap."

Mole's indistinct muttering followed.

"Gimme a break, will ya? Can't a guy get two seconds to himself? Sheesh." Hack was definitely annoyed, thus piquing Kyle's interest. He listened closely to how Mole would respond, but their conversation was apparently over – only one set of footsteps was going upstairs. Right above the kitchen, a door closed and then there was a dull _fwomp_ as Hack assumedly threw himself on the bed.

A loud grunt brought Kyle's attention back to the first floor. Mole was in the kitchen doorway, arms crossed, staring him down. His anger was obvious, feral-looking.

Kyle wouldn't let himself be afraid. "What?" he said curtly, staring straight back at him.

Although it didn't surprise him, it agitated Kyle that Mole's only answer was a low throaty sound. He wished he could work up the nerve to roll his eyes at him. Huffing, Mole trudged into the kitchen and went straight for the cupboards, making a lot of noise as he dug through them. Whatever he was doing, Kyle didn't care, he just didn't want to be around this freak of nature asshole anymore, so he got up and left.

After going up to his room to grab his satchel, he went out through the front door, then around the house to fill up his canteen at the well. The process of lowering the bucket down and then lugging it back up was a lot more obnoxious than he would've guessed, but he managed to do it, thankfully. With his canteen filled up and compass in hand, Kyle set out on a walk with no intention whatsoever of searching for Stan. If he came across him, it would be one-hundred percent coincidental. Actively trying to find him would be needy.

Even though he was able to keep his stride slow enough to be within the limits of "strolling," Kyle couldn't help but keep his eyes extra-peeled for any sight of Stan. Since he saw no one when he scanned the field, he headed towards the patch of woods behind the house. The trees here were different than the ones up north, with sprawling branches that reached up to their canopies, green and flourishing in the early summer sunshine. It was cooler today, even more so under the shade of the trees, and Kyle was glad for this as trudged through the sparse forest – he'd done enough sweating yesterday.

He followed what looked vaguely like a trail through the sparse woods and eventually ended up at a meadow blanketed in blue, cerulean flowers filling the span of his vision. A breeze kicked up and drowned him in an intoxicating sweet smell, pulling him into the meadow. He breathed deeply, hearing his pulse, quickened by caffeine, echo in tune with the saccharine wind.

Up ahead, he saw him. Lying on the ground, looking up at the sky, Stan seemed to fit in perfectly with the environment, as if he was a part of it just as much as the blue wildflowers. Kyle approached him, unthinkingly, then froze, halted by uncertainty, when Stan sat up and their eyes met.

"Hey," Stan said.

"Hi," Kyle said slowly. "Um. I wanted to apologize. I – I was an ass."

"Kyle, it's – " Stan looked away, frowning. "I don't want you to be sorry."

Kyle knelt down on the ground, close to Stan. "Why? I've been so horrible lately."

Stan was silent for a moment, crinkling his brow as he stared into the distance. "When you said you wanted to do that…thing, I remembered what Craig'd said, back in Tennessee, you know. About you bein' my lamb." He lowered his voice when he said the last sentence, his cheeks coloring. "I'm tryin' so hard not to think about that fucked up shit. I don't want this to ever, ever be like that. But then I dunno what this is. And you're not a girl, either. So what _is_ this?"

This question bothered Kyle because he didn't know exactly how to answer it. Worst of all, his most influential reference, Greek pederasty, wasn't necessarily applicable to _defining_ their relationship. The best thing Kyle could come up with was also the cheesiest: "It's just two people who like each other, I guess," he said, feeling his face flush. "I know that's not really what you're asking. But that's how I think about it."

Stan shook his head. "Sorry I'm so hung up on this. You're probably right. I've just always felt like a freak for bein' like this, then when I hit the road and learned about these jocker bastards it really bugged me, 'cuz I knew they were freaks like me. I never heard of a guy loving another guy for real before, but that's what I always wanted. And now that I finally got it," he said, looking at Kyle tentatively, "I can't figure it out. I'm always worried I'm gonna fuck it up. Hell, I already have." Huffing dejectedly, he pulled a flower out of the ground and glared at it before he began plucking its petals off.

Kyle clasped his hands around both of Stan's, stilling them, then moved his face very close to his. "You haven't fucked it up. And you're not a freak, either. Not like how those rotten hobos are, anyway. Me and you, we're just – different."

"You know other people who're 'different'?" Stan asked.

"What? No, not really. Why do you ask?"

"Because you know all the right things to do."

Kyle guffawed, amazed Stan would think this. "I don't though. I really don't. I'm just going based on what I've read in books. I told you before, I've never done this either." He hoped Stan understood that by "this," he didn't just mean the things they did in bed, but what they meant to each other and who they were to each other.

"Will you tell me then? All the stuff you know?" Stan asked earnestly.

Kyle was thrilled: not only because, as he had originally suspected, Stan didn't know much about inverted sexuality, but because he was always eager to take up the position of mentor, especially if he had the opportunity to explain something he was truly passionate about.

As Stan had not read the _Symposium_ , only having glossed over some of Plato's better known works, Kyle had a lot to cover. He jumped right in with Pausanias' anecdote, explaining the difference between common love and heavenly love, taking great pride in saying that since heavenly love could only arise in men, love between men was the most revered of all. As Kyle became more invested in sharing these near-and-dear Hellenistic ideals, he spoke faster, compensating forethought for speed. He realized the danger of such fast-paced talking when Stan asked a very damning question: "Wait, why's one guy called the 'lover' and the other called the 'beloved'? Did they think it was just one-sided?"

The truth, which Kyle couldn't admit lest the whole argument be destroyed in Stan's eyes, was that the "lover" was a man and the "beloved" was a boy, their partnership defined not only by love, but also by the sharing of intelligence and wisdom. Not wanting Stan to make the mistake of comparing this to hobo perversion, Kyle scrambled for a lie. "Oh, no, no. Not at all. That's just um. A technicality. Yes, a technicality. See, since it's two men, you need a way to differentiate between them. So the 'beloved,' is the passive partner and the 'lover' is the active partner." Pleased with himself for such a convincing on-the-spot cover-up, he watched as Stan nodded in understanding.

"Moving right along, then," Kyle said, clearing his throat in a professional manner, "we have Aristophanes, whose theory on love, I feel, is the most poignant. He explains why soulmates exist." A flush crept up his neck when he said this, and he suddenly felt the need to touch Stan, but he settled for shifting slightly closer. Straightening up, he explained how humans were once two people stuck together: "man," two men, "woman," two women, and a strange androgynous sex, one man and one woman. The gods, distasteful of the strength of these humans, split them in two, creating the people we have today. Kyle was also sure to mention that the men who were halves of the original man were the most masculine and most courageous. "So we're always looking for our other half. And when we find that person, we can't bear to be away from them."

"Plato really wrote that?" Stan asked. "That two guys can be soulmates?"

"Yep. It's all in there," Kyle said. "And the best part is when he talks about going back to your original flesh. Becoming one person again. It, um. It heals us." This was what Kyle had been vying to get to the whole time, his greatest selling point. He held his breath waiting for Stan's response.

Stan's brow furrowed, and he looked to the ground, frowning.

"What?" Kyle asked, anxious.

"I dunno," Stan said, sucking in a long breath. "I just thought it always hurt the guy on the bottom. Seems weird to call it 'healing' when one of the two's gettin' hurt."

"Well, that's what the Vaseline was for," Kyle muttered.

"Oh. I didn't – I didn't realize that. Sorry. Fuck. You must think I'm such a bakehead." Stan pinched the bridge of his nose, grimacing.

"I don't think that at all," Kyle said, deeply bothered by this. After the incident, fleetingly, and in anger, he had thought so, yes, as unfair as that was of him. "Just because you're not obsessed with inverted sexuality doesn't mean you're stupid." He cracked a smile, peering up at Stan hopefully.

"You're obsessed?" Stan asked, returning the smile.

"Probably," Kyle answered seriously. "I've read everything about it I can get my hands on – which isn't much, as you can imagine. I just wanted to make sense of who I am. But more than that, I wanted to meet someone like me."

Stan reached out to touch Kyle's face. "I'm like you."

"I know," Kyle said. "God, I'm so grateful for it." He parted his lips, and then, in the warmth of their mouths meeting, he tasted it: the last washing away of isolation, the end-all of difference as exclusion, for they had found in each other an oasis of similitude.

Their touching was slow, deliberate, as if they were tending each other's old wounds, those self-sick feelings of being an unknown in a known world. Kyle refused to think of it now, but in his heart he knew these were wounds that could never completely heal, not even if they rejoined their bodies. This world was crueler, hard against his back, the gilded past alive only in books. So he would cling to Stan, locking fingers, pulse, and thought, making knots so tight they couldn't be untangled.

Wrapped up in each other, panting, desire replaced poetics. They were both hard, and Kyle was burning in the knowledge that Stan's dick, solid and strong against his thigh, could bridge their physical separateness. But as much as it pained him, he couldn't ask for it, not again. The ball was in Stan's court now, and he could only watch from the other side of the net, aching for Stan volley it back to him.

He didn't have to wait long. Stan leaned back, straddling his waist. His tone uncertain, boyish, he asked, "Um… Did you still want to try it?"

"What, intercourse?" Kyle asked, straining to conceal his excitement.

"Yeah, if uh – if the Vaseline really makes it not hurt," Stan said through choppy breaths.

"It doesn't, I mean, it does, yeah." The significance of what they were going to do eclipsed the technicalities of language. "It won't hurt," Kyle amended.

"Alright. Yeah, okay. Let's do it," Stan said, his voice dazed with lust.

Consumed by his elation, Kyle surged forward to kiss him.

They decided they would go back to the house, to their bed. In silence, they hurried through the woods, their thoughts concentrated on this incredible thing they were about to do. Only their hands touched. But just as the shade of the oaks was perforated with patches of light, not entirely opaque, their frenetic physicality for each other had not been burnt out: it was merely distracted, holding its breath in dramatic pause for the great crescendo that was to come.

In front of the back door, they paused, unlinking their fingers before going inside. The kitchen was empty; the whole house felt empty. Upstairs, Kyle peeked into the other bedroom to see if Hack was still sleeping. No one was in the room, confirming that the house truly was empty, completely theirs. They slipped into their bedroom, first exhaling the tension of encountering anyone else, then inhaling the concentrated solitude of privacy. Standing before each other, they caught their breath in this way.

"I could be the 'beloved,'" Stan said. "If you want."

Kyle frowned. "I'd rather you be the 'lover," honestly. Unless you don't want to…?" It made his stomach twist to ask; he couldn't fathom intercourse with Stan opposite of the way he'd imagined it.

"Oh, no – I didn't mean that. Yeah, that's – that's fine." Stan scratched the back of his neck, then pulled off the eye patch, crumpling it in his hand. "So where'd you put the Vaseline?"

"In the drawer," Kyle said, walking past Stan to retrieve it. He sat on the edge of the bed, holding the jar in his hands like it was something magical. And in actuality, it was: like Cinderella's pumpkin that transformed into a carriage, simple petroleum jelly was ascending from mundane usage, mending chapped lips, to amazing usage, catalyzing the act of lovemaking.

Stan sat down on the side of the bed, too, trailing his hand around Kyle's waist, beneath the fabric, over the skin. Despite the warmth of the room, Kyle shivered, easily starting to get hard again from the way Stan's fingertips moved over his hipbone. He turned to Stan, their noses bumping together, lips brushing dryly. Whispering, Stan said, "Let's get under the covers."

Kyle put the jar on the table, away for now, but within arm's reach, then kicked off his shoes and climbed into bed with Stan. Still clothed, beneath a single sheet, the laid facing each other, both of them reserved and shy, as they had been those first times they touched each other. Stan shifted closer, just enough to press their foreheads together. His breath on Kyle's face was hot and choppy, agitated and distinctly nervous. Kyle freed them from the stifling cocoon of the sheet, feeling it was doing more bad than good now, then in unison with Stan, he sucked in a breath of cooler air.

"You're thinking too much," Kyle said.

"I know, sorry," Stan said, mumbling.

Kyle brushed Stan's bangs away from his face. "It's just me."

Stan threaded his arms around Kyle's back, burying his face in his neck, and said, "It's because it's you."

Kyle understood, because his own apprehension, suppressed but biting at its confines, came from the same place: this felt so incredibly paramount _because_ it was Stan he was doing it with. However, he didn't want either of them to be so nervous – why stand at the foot of a mountain, terrified of the peak, when you had a traveling partner? He moved his head to kiss Stan, deeply and conclusively, trying to relay this sentiment.

Stan sighed into the kiss, and Kyle absorbed the tension he exhaled, nullifying it, until Stan finally relaxed against him. Easy, calm now, they reassured each other in gentle movements: a soundless kiss beneath the eye, the tracing of a collarbone, a hand running over a forearm. Gradually, the intensity from earlier returned, and they were kissing harder and faster, their hands no longer lingering on soft caresses, but fervently roaming each other's bodies. They peeled the clothing off each other, breathing hard, still trying to kiss.

Once naked, Kyle slipped his hand between them to grasp Stan's cock, melting when he felt its firmness in his hand, liquefying when he thought of it inside him. He reached around to grab the Vaseline on the nightstand, flicking the cap off and scooping up a moderate amount with his fingers. Hastily, dutifully, he smothered Stan's erection with it, unable to keep himself from moaning in sync with the long groan Stan let out. Nor could he keep himself from pumping Stan's cock, enchanted with the sensation of his hand not just moving, but _gliding_ along his shaft.

Kyle had to force himself to let go. Today was for intercourse, not basic manual acts, and one very important step of preparation remained. Determined, he smeared more Vaseline on his finger then reached around his back and touched them to _that spot,_ his cock twitching as he spread the lubricant around, as he dipped his fingertip just inside himself. Stan's eyes were on him while he did this, and it was the most extrinsically embarrassed he had ever felt in his life. It thrilled him, deeply.

"Now, um, get on top of me," Kyle said, wedging himself under Stan. His own voice sounded strange to him. He wondered if this meant anything.

Stan obliged, shifting into position. Hunched over Kyle, the blanket draped over his back, he seemed unsure, holding his cock as if he didn't know what to do with it.

His eyes on Stan's cock (could that really fit inside him?), Kyle spread his legs and lifted his balls out of the way, raising his hips a little. "So just – you know," he said, glancing at Stan pointedly.

"Oh, right, uh – okay," Stan said, scooting down a bit. He looked down below, seeing _everything_ , and the extrinsic embarrassment hit hard again, making Kyle's cock throb in his hand.

Stan touched the head of his cock to the space between Kyle's cheeks, moving it around slickly. It felt huge, and Kyle couldn't help but wonder if maybe this _would_ hurt, even with the Vaseline. He brushed off this concern; he refused to let groundless anxieties fester.

When Stan pressed harder, right against that spot, Kyle sucked in a breath, thinking to himself, _This is it_.

But it wasn't – Stan's dick slipped downward. He tried again, and the same thing happened. With a frustrated grunt, he tried yet again, and Kyle almost felt him breach entrance this time, only to feel Stan's dick slide down between his cheeks.

"You have to push harder," Kyle said, using every bit of his self-control to not sound as exasperated as he was.

"I'm trying to," Stan said. Though diluted, there was still a discernible edge to his voice, and Kyle frowned, half-contemplating just taking Stan's dick and shoving it in himself.

Then, Stan pushed against him with the most resolve yet, and this time he actually managed to squeeze inside. The pain was exorbitant, worse because Kyle hadn't been expecting any at all. He yelped, and Stan immediately pulled out, already blubbering panic-stricken apologies. Kyle was similarly horrified, speechless with the shock that it had actually _hurt_ , and not just a little bit, but so much it had essentially been unbearable. He felt like he had been deceived.

"Oh, God, are you okay? Kyle? Kyle? Did I hurt you?" Stan asked, clutching Kyle's shoulders.

The look of sheer terror on Stan's face was unsettling. "No, I'm fine, I just – I can't believe it hurt." In the same vein, he couldn't believe how wrong he'd been to think the Vaseline would make it _not_ hurt. Was this always the case? Did unnatural intercourse always hurt, or were they missing some key piece of information?

"I'm such a fool," Stan sobbed, burying his face into Kyle's chest. "I'm sorry, I'm so, so sorry."

"Stan, please don't," Kyle said. "It was my idea."

Stan didn't say anything to this, just continued to sniffle against Kyle's chest. Kyle thought he was being overly dramatic, until he recalled, cringing, that before today, Stan's idea of unnatural intercourse was definitively painful. Thus, the fact that it _was_ painful must be like some sick self-fulfilling prophecy for him, one made all the more horrible by Kyle's literary persuasions. The guilt began to gnaw on Kyle, and he wrapped his other arm around Stan's back, needing for him to stop trembling. Apart from the guilt, Kyle also felt stupid. His "Vaseline equals no pain" theory wasn't a theory at all, it was merely a hypothesis. He should've tested it, somehow.

Unable to stand this anymore – Stan's extreme remorse, the stickiness, the gloomy smell of failure in the too-warm room – Kyle wrung himself free from under Stan and sat cross-legged on the bed. Stan did the same, though slowly and very sadly, hanging his head and refusing to look at Kyle.

"Look," Kyle said, putting his hands on Stan's shoulders, "this was like an experiment. Now we know that Vaseline alone doesn't work, so we have to come up with other solutions."

Stan raised his head, showing his face, splotchy with tear-stains, and stared at Kyle in disbelief. "How can you still want to try this? If I'm just going to hurt you again – "

"It's not like it hurt _that_ bad, Jesus!" Kyle interrupted, potently exasperated now. He clenched his thighs and let out a breath. "I'm not saying we have to try again today, or even tomorrow, but I'm invested in this, alright, and a bad first attempt isn't going to stop me." Softening his tone, he added, "I don't exactly _know_ how to do this the right way. I'm just making educated guesses. So any input would be appreciated."

Thankfully, some of the worry evaporated from Stan's features. He seemed to be considering a response, his brow tented in thought. At last, he said, "I don't know. I'm just really hungry."

Kyle wasn't sure why he burst out laughing, perhaps because of how sadly Stan had said it, though likely also because he'd vastly been expecting Stan to say something like, "Maybe the angle we used was wrong," or "Maybe we used too much Vaseline." A tiny smile tugged at Stan's lips, too, and Kyle suddenly wanted to kiss him, so he did. "Will you be able to think of something after you eat?" Kyle said, teasing him.

Nodding slowly, Stan took hold of Kyle's hand, toying with his fingers. "Yeah. Because," he began, voice trailing off.

"Because…?"

"Because I do want to do it," Stan said, straightening up. "And if there's a way to make it not hurt, then I want to find out what it is."

Although this had been Kyle's own argument, hearing it from Stan, so gently reworded and sincere, positively melted his heart. Furthermore, he was filled with a sense of vindication, for he knew Stan was not accommodating him out of pity, or God forbid, amusement, but genuinely open to seeing things _his_ way. This was something very few people in Kyle's life had offered him.

So, with newfound enthusiasm, he planted a quick kiss on Stan's forehead before hopping out of bed, eager to get everything tidied up. Stan went downstairs – still naked – to get a bucket of water and a washcloth. Kyle began fixing the bed, glad now, for the sake of the sheets, that neither of them had come. Physiologically, however, the relative cleanliness of the linens was irrelevant, and he started getting hard again just thinking about come. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he traced a finger down his stiffening cock, torn between wanting to be neat, orderly and productive, and wanting to divulge in the lazier, but much more alluring, desire to have an orgasm. He gave his erection a tentative tug.

Even though he knew Stan would return in just a few minutes, Kyle couldn't make himself let go of his cock. He laid back and started stroking himself off in earnest. It felt sneaky to do this the very second he had a moment of privacy, fundamentally opposed to everything he'd told himself earlier in the day about openness and honest communication. But there was no way he could have a frank, investigative discussion with Stan about unnatural intercourse if he was too sexually agitated to think clearly.

Outside, he heard the slow creek of Stan pulling the water up from the well. Anxious now, Kyle pumped faster, grasping for climax. Fortunately, he managed to come only a few seconds later, spilling himself neatly into his palm. The physical relief was intense, and Kyle lay still, quasi-delirious as he caught his breath. The distinct clatter of the kitchen door slamming shut had his mind reeling again, churning with guilt, and he sprung up, scanning the room for anything with which he could dispose of his crime. He ended up wiping his coagulating seed on a page of the Farmer's Almanac (the victim page was the February 1910 lunar calendar, and he wondered, briefly, where he'd been three years ago, what'd he been doing on the night of that February's full moon) before squeezing the book shut and chucking it in the closet.

Stan returned, and Kyle was intentionally chatty as they washed themselves, mostly to distract himself from thinking of his minor slip-up. By the time they had redressed and gone downstairs to make dinner, he had totally forgotten about it.

Although the stove in the kitchen was gas, the line was long defunct, so they brought their cooking supplies outside, where they set up a small campfire behind the house. Stan seemed to be in deep thought as he held the skillet over the fire, staring at the beans as they cooked. "I wish I'd thought to look up books on this stuff, too," he said. "Then I'd feel like I had more to go on."

Kyle restrained himself from commenting that while it probably wouldn't be _too_ difficult to find the _Symposium_ , no public library in the whole country was going to have Ellis' _Sexual Inversion_ on its shelves. The only reason Kyle had read it was because of a staff oversight at the university library. (The book belonged to a special psychology collection, meaning it could not be checked out, but someone had shelved it in the general collection. Knowing this mistake would not go overlooked forever, and that if the book found its way back to the special collection he'd likely never see it again, Kyle hid it between two back-to-back bookshelves.)

This reminded him that in the real world, their social statuses were very different, which always put Kyle on edge, so he effectively swayed the conversation by saying, "Even in the books I've read, I've never come across any actual _instructions_. So really, we're in the same boat here."

The beans were beginning simmer. Stan stirred them around a bit. "I just didn't think it'd be so hard," he, sighing.

"It's only hard because we don't have all the information," Kyle said. "Between the two of us, I'm sure we'll be able to piece it together." He winced at the unintentional pun.

"Yeah, you're probably right. And I do have some…thoughts, but let's eat first."

Stan ate ravenously, but Kyle only picked at his food, not feeling particularly hungry. He ended up cleaning his plate, anyway, because Stan had cooked, and this made the very ordinary navy beans seem significant, special. _Like magic beans_ , he thought, smiling to himself. This led him to imagine Stan's magic beans sprouting in his stomach, which had uncomfortably bizarre sexual connotations, so he promptly rerouted his thoughts, staring at Stan's well-worn boots, wondering how many miles he'd walked in them.

After eating, they dumped the dishes in the kitchen sink, then sat against the side of the house, Stan smoking and Kyle sort of wanting to smoke, too. Since today was a day for trying new things, very suavely, he said, "Lemme try that." He ignored the amusement in Stan's face as he handed him the cigarette, then took a slow, careful drag of it, sucking it in deliberately, just as he had done with the cocaine. This was better though, as he wasn't inhaling particles, just smoke. He coughed anyway.

"You alright?" Stan asked, neither overly-concerned nor mockingly.

"Yes, fine." Kyle almost expected to feel a rush similar to the coke. When none came, he had to tell himself not to be disappointed.

Stan tapped the ash from the cigarette then took another drag. "Well," he said, "here's what I was thinking." He glanced at Kyle, then took a deep breath before continuing. "You didn't seem very, er, relaxed. I think maybe if you were more relaxed it would uh. Go in easier."

Initially, Kyle was inclined to be offended, as if it had been _his_ fault it had hurt. But like the mature adult he was now, he willingly considered Stan's observation, quickly realizing it was actually very valid. He had written as much in his diary entry: relaxing the bonds was needed to bind two things together. "And just how am I supposed to relax?" he asked as plainly as he could.

"Mentally, I guess?" Stan suggested. "You just seemed really, um. Tense."

Kyle had to clamp his lips shut to keep from saying something absurd like, _"Well maybe I wouldn't've been 'tense' if your dick wasn't so big."_ He was finding it hard to discuss the most intimate recesses of his body in a purely methodological fashion; it was just too personal. "I guess," he finally said, relenting.

"We could also try a different position," Stan said.

"Oh, like angle of entry?" Kyle said, perking up. He thought of geometry, of acute and obtuse angles.

"Well, no. I meant like you on your stomach and me going in from behind," Stan mumbled. He was blushing now, clearly embarrassed, and Kyle was glad he wasn't the only one. To make matters worse, he was also starting to get an erection from this.

"Hmm. That might work." Although Kyle wasn't in love with the idea, he couldn't deny that it was innovative.

"There's um, one more thing I thought of," Stan began, fiddling with his cigarette, which was very short now, "It's sorta, uh, outside the box though, so I doubt you'll be too keen on it."

"What is it?" Kyle asked, praying it would be the genius variety of outlandish, not the objectionable one.

Stan was blushing furiously now. "Well, um. When I was able to get in, it was really, really tight. Like so tight it almost hurt. So maybe if I could um, stretch you out first, it would go in easier."

The very concept, or perhaps just the way Stan worded it, was intensely erotic, and Kyle pulled his legs up to his chest in an effort to hide his now very obvious erection. "Uhh. How though?"

"Fingers, I guess," Stan mumbled.

Kyle squeezed his legs together, thinking about Stan's fingers inside him, like little workers clearing the loading dock for a big truck to pull in.

Stammering, Stan said, "I know, it's weird, I'm weird for thinking it, so just forget – "

"No, I think it's a good idea!" Kyle said, surprised by the volume of his voice.

"Oh. Wait, really?"

"Y-yes." Kyle realized he was staring at Stan's fingers. He tried to look away but couldn't.

"Oh. Uh. Thanks."

Neither of them said anything for a moment.

Carefully, Kyle interrupted the silence. "We could try it now. If you want."

Stan's eye shot open. He gaped at Kyle with adorable amazement, as if he'd just told him that Santa Claus was real after all. "Okay," Stan said, his breathing coming in a little faster, a shy smile tugging at the corner of his lips.

They went inside to find the house still empty. "Do you think they'll be back soon?" Kyle asked. He would just die if Hack and Mole busted into the house while they were in the middle of their second attempt.

"Nah. They're probably gettin' dinner at the jungle. And knowing Hack, they'll be sticking around for the cheap booze."

This was conclusive enough to satisfy Kyle. He easily shrugged off the preoccupation, then completely forgot about it when Stan led him into their bedroom and kissed him with surprising resolve against the closed door. Kyle kissed back in equal measure, effectively getting Stan very worked up very fast, which was flattering even after so many times. Likewise, feeling Stan's erection jutting up against him was something Kyle was sure would always leave him weak in the knees.

Still trying to kiss, they fumbled to remove their clothing, both of them under the joint impression that it was imperative they be naked as quickly as possible. On the bed, reveling in just how good it felt to have all his skin touching all of Stan's, Kyle was struck with a sense of déjà vu, which was to be expected, really, for they had done this only a few hours ago. This time, he just hoped the results would be different.

Kyle reached for the Vaseline and handed it to Stan. Wordlessly, Stan took it, coating his fingers liberally. "Are you relaxed?" Stan asked.

He wasn't, no, not really. Stan was sitting back on his knees looking and him, fingers slick and ready to touch him down there, and even though Kyle was definitely aroused in anticipation for this, it also made him nervous. He made a conscious effort to relax, breathing deeply and calming his muscles. When he told Stan, "Yes, I am," it was the truth.

"'Kay," Stan said. With his other hand, he moved his palm across Kyle's chest. It was reassuring, and Kyle let his eyes slip shut, very much at ease now. "Yeah, just relax, just like this."

Stan's fingers brushed up against Kyle's balls, and Kyle spread his legs, raising his pelvis to give Stan better access. Then, he felt a tentative brush against that spot and inadvertently seized up. "Shh," Stan said, leaning down to pet his hair. "Relax."

Sighing in apology, Kyle did so, this time determined to _stay_ relaxed. In slow circles, Stan began moving his finger over that spot. It felt weirdly good, like a miniature massage, easing the last of the tension away. He could hear Stan murmuring supportively into his ear, but he couldn't decipher the exact words, too engrossed in the sensation of Stan touching him in such an intimate spot. His whole body felt limp and warm, which was enchantingly novel, as he was still very much aroused – usually he felt antsy and strung-up to the point of physical agitation, not at all like this lulling, tingling constant.

Then, the very tip of Stan's finger slipped inside him. Wonderfully, it didn't hurt at all, not in the least. Stan was watching him guardedly, and Kyle nodded, wiggling his hips and sighing as he felt more of Stan's finger enter him. "That's – yeah, that's good," Kyle murmured. He wiped the drool from the corner of his mouth, his eyes rolling back into his head as Stan's finger inched further inside him. His cock was throbbing now, dribbling precome onto his abdomen, and he wanted very badly to touch himself, but of course, he didn't. It would have seemed inappropriate, in a way, and besides, he still needed to stay as physiologically calm as possible.

Stan kissed him on the jaw, then, ever so slowly, he withdrew his finger a tiny bit and slide it back inside. "Okay?" he asked quietly, continuing to move his finger in this careful way.

Kyle could have laughed; this was a thousand times more than "okay," this was absolutely marvelous, though that was a gross understatement, too. He couldn't have found the right words even if he weren't so sensually overwhelmed. The best he could do was let out a breathy, "Yeah," and ache for more.

When Stan pulled his finger out almost all the way, then drove it all the way back in, Kyle could not, _would_ not, silence his long moan. If he couldn't say it with words, he had to somehow let Stan know how good he was making him feel. He squeezed his muscles, clenching around Stan's finger, holding it tightly, then placed his hands on either side of his face and leaned up to kiss him hard on the mouth. "Does it really feel good?" Stan asked, vaguely incredulous.

"It feels really good, actually," Kyle said, falling back against the bed.

"Want me to put another one in?" Stan asked.

"Yeah. Please."

Stan removed his finger entirely, and the acute feeling of emptiness Kyle felt was surprisingly bothersome. He needed it back immediately. "You can just – go back in," he said, groaning appreciatively when Stan obeyed, moving two fingers inside now. There was more of a stretch this time, but it wasn't painful, just a bit unusual. Kyle wondered what it looked like down there, if the visual of Stan's fingers pushing past the muscle, widening it, was more sexy or bizarre. Probably the latter, he thought, glad that Stan wasn't seeing this, either.

It was irrelevant, anyway. This was a sensory process, not a visual one. He ran his hands over Stan's chest, gliding over his nipples, giggling when he sucked in a quick breath, apparently taken off guard. "Hey," Stan said with mock reproach, placing his left hand on Kyle's side.

"I can't help it. My hands are bored."

"Mine aren't," Stan said, grinning as he twisted his fingers inside Kyle, beginning to move them around more freely, more decisively.

By the time Stan had added a third finger and was performing the same gradual in-and-out movement as before, Kyle wanted to think he had been thoroughly stretched, but he was loath to assert this with any real confidence. Although Stan's dick wasn't quite as wide as three fingers were, it was much greater in both length and surface area. He wanted to be ready, though; Stan's fingers felt good, but they weren't his _cock_ , the very embodiment of his sexual self.

Kyle put his hand on Stan's shoulder, pushing him back a little. "Hey, um," he said, "do you want to try it now? I mean. With your dick."

Stan's fingers went still. "Oh. Ah, yeah. Do you think you're um. Stretched enough?"

"Yeah," Kyle said, although there was only one way to be sure of this. He felt mostly sure, however, about eighty-five percent, and it wasn't as if much more stretching could be done with fingers alone.

The removal of all three of Stan's fingers was particularly saddening, though the thought that Stan's dick would soon replace them was like exchanging something good for something so much better, so Kyle happily tolerated the temporary emptiness. Stan was slathering his cock with Vaseline now, pumping it dutifully to get it at full mast again. Watching this, Kyle experienced a wayward flare of anxiety, which he promptly squashed: if he had learned anything thus far, it was that being mentally and physically calm were of utmost importance. However, he couldn't logically refute that even though Stan's fingers hadn't been painful, it didn't mean his cock wouldn't be. Kyle decided then that as long as the pain wasn't excruciating, he was going to put up with it. He was that determined.

Stan leaned over to put the Vaseline back on the nightstand. He moved back on top of Kyle, holding his erection at the base and licking his lower lip uncertainly as he peered up at him. "It'll be fine this time," Kyle said, brushing his bangs away from his face. "I'm sure of it." Now this was definitely a lie, but it effectively allayed Stan, so no harm done. Besides, confidence, even if it wasn't entirely truth-based, was always better than apprehension.

Stan let out a choppy breath and nodded. Still on his knees, he scooted down, inartfully navigating his cockhead around down there. When Kyle felt it pressing right against that spot, he repeated the words, "relax, just relax," in his head like a mantra, hearing them in Stan's voice.

"Ready?" Stan asked, not sounding too ready himself.

"Yes," Kyle answered, what may have previously been faux confidence bolstering into something genuine. He responded physically, too, doing his best to open himself for Stan, recalling his inappropriately industrial metaphor of a truck pulling into a loading dock. Naturally, they had to open the door.

This time when Stan pushed inside, instead of feeling like an intrusion, it was exactly how Kyle had originally theorized in his diary: the convergence of two things that could _only just_ fit together. However, that wasn't to say it was entirely painless. It did still hurt, but it was a dull, manageable pain. He could tell this was from being stretched further, from his muscles straining to allocate Stan's girth. It was actually a relief to be physically aware of the cause though, because last time, the pain had been so sharp and instantaneous that this had been impossible.

As expected, Stan went very slowly, pausing with each small fraction of an inch he pushed inside. At first, Kyle assumed this exaggerated slowness was solely for his benefit, though he soon realized, noting Stan's huffing, the severe twisting of his brow, that it also had to do with how insanely stimulating it must be to have your cock encased so tightly. "What does it feel like?" Kyle asked, deliberately marking his tone with flagrant curiosity. (An "What book is that you're reading?" sort of tone, not an "Are you going to eat the rest of that cake?" sort of tone.) The last thing he needed was for Stan to ask him if he wanted to try switching roles.

"It feels like – the best hug," Stan said, his voice cracking, as if his vocal range could not carry the weight of the sentiment he wished to speak with. He closed his eyes and swallowed. "It's so warm, and like… being held really tight."

"So it feels… good?" Kyle inquired, delicately tracing the inside of Stan's elbow. The analogies were touching, yes, but he wanted a more visceral perspective.

"Really fucking good," Stan said, very much in awe.

It continued to be a very gradual process: Stan would stop to catch his breath, taking in concentrated lungfuls of air in order to brush off the sudden urge to come, and Kyle would take these moments to mentally praise his body for its dutiful work in accommodating Stan's. Thus, once Stan was finally, finally fully inside him, his pubic hair tickling the space behind Kyle's balls, it definitely felt like an accomplishment. Stan dropped against Kyle's chest, as if exhausted by their having reached the pinnacle of the mountain. Though they had both exerted themselves to get here, Kyle acknowledged, smiling, that Stan had toiled harder, as if he had pulled Kyle along on a little sled all the way up the face of the mountain. He kissed his cheek.

"I don't know how long I'm going to be able to last," Stan said sadly.

"That's alright," Kyle said, and he meant it, too, because their first time didn't have to match the practiced perfection of, for example, his fellatio technique. Besides, in a nascent way, it was already perfect, for it was Stan inside him, restoring their unconnected bodies for the first time since before the gods' wrath in that mythological fairy tale.

To Kyle, it resonated as truth beyond question that they fit together so well for one simple reason. He was seeing the panoramic expanse from the top of the mountain now, and he cupped Stan's face to look into his eyes, wanting him to see it, too. He could: his eyes wide and mouth open, like he wanted to take everything in but didn't know where to start. So, in the softest whisper, Kyle told him: "You can move."

"Okay." Stan only mouthed this word; the breath he exhaled thereafter made more sound. Tentatively, he pulled out a tiny bit, then, just as carefully, he pushed back in, burying his face in Kyle's neck as he filled him entirely again. He did this a few times, the movement of his hips strained and meticulous. Kyle was hard again, his cock throbbing as Stan's stomach brushed against the head each time he moved. This gradual build-up was so forced; Kyle wanted Stan to let go, knowing the moment they burned consciousness, the restoration of their souls could ignite from those flames. He coaxed him with his mouth, kissing him, and with his body, pulling him in deeper.

And then, it let loose. Stan thrust into him faster, Kyle felt his arm scramble between their bodies to grasp his cock, pumping it with his calloused palms, and then, it was suddenly, unimaginably too much. He could feel it at the very root of himself, something being touched by Stan. Whether this was actual or delusional Kyle didn't know, but whatever it was, it was impossible to ignore or contain. Holding onto Stan, he came, his whole body tensing, his mind blinded by white words on white paper.

Stan gripped him tightly, scattering the pages until Kyle could see him again. The blue in his eyes stained one page that had been left behind, and Kyle knew then that Stan was going to come. He linked his arms around his neck and held him. Stan drove one final thrust into Kyle, then surged in and out in little erratic bursts, emptying himself. With a quaking sigh, he collapsed onto Kyle, who held onto him tighter, because it was the only thing to do.

They rested in each other's arms, still connected at that very intimate level. The dawn came slowly: Stan raised his head, and they looked at each other, seeing something different in their same faces. The fat black of Stan's pupils was enough to stain the words of another sheet. Kyle read it out loud: "I love you." He was astounded to hear himself say this, though not because it wasn't true.

Stan looked like he might cry. His lower lip trembling, he opened his mouth, once, twice, then said, "I love you, too. I love you so, so much." He pressed his forehead to Kyle's, and the tears came then, dripping onto the paper. The ink was immovable.


	6. Chapter 6

Kyle awoke sometime in the middle of the night, when it was still dark. His arm was being gripped, tightly. Stan was trembling against him, his breath quaking with each panicked inhale. "Stan?" he asked, nudging him.

Stan tensed and made the most frightened-sounding whimper. It occurred to Kyle then that he was still asleep. He shook Stan's shoulder and said, "Stan. Stan," trying to wake him up, but he didn't. "Stan, wake up," Kyle pleaded, afraid now, too.

With a shuddering gasp, Stan awoke. His hands moved over Kyle's body in a panic, grasping for a handle in his sudden departure from dream-world. "Shhh, shh," Kyle whispered. He pressed his whole body to Stan's and wound an arm around his back, applying pressure to sanction him here, in the safety of their room. "It was just a dream."

Stan exhaled breathily: a half-sob grazed his vocal cords and strummed a sound of deep relief. He lowered his head, hiding in Kyle's shoulder. Eventually, his breathing steadied and the tension began to drain from his body. "Sorry," he murmured.

"Hm?"

"Sorry for waking you up," Stan clarified miserably.

"No, shh. It's okay. Just go back to sleep," Kyle said, beginning to nod off even as he was saying so.

Stan murmured something, and then Kyle drifted off again, only barely aware that Stan was linking their fingers together.

* * *

Kyle's second awakening that morning, some three hours later, was also disconcerting. There were a series of oppressive knocks on their door, then Hack nearly shouting, "You two up? We gotta get to the farm."

"Jesus, okay! We're up!" Kyle spat out, desperate to get the knocking to stop, to get Hack to shut up. He buried his face in Stan's shoulder and waited for Hack's footsteps to pad away.

"Well," Hack said, pausing. "A'ight, then. We're leavin' in twenty minutes." He sighed as if disappointed, which was annoying, and reminded Kyle of his summers at home, when he'd sleep all morning, until his mother would finally burst through the door and ask, irritated, if he planned on spending the whole day sleeping.

Stan moaned sleepily, then rolled onto his stomach, flopping an arm across Kyle's midsection. The hair on his arms commingled with the sparser hairs on Kyle's stomach in a vaguely ticklish way. It was stupid how arousing this was to Kyle, stupider yet that they had to get up and go to work instead of fooling around in bed all day. "We have to get up," Kyle said half-heartedly, frowning down at his morning wood.

"Two minutes," Stan murmured.

"Alright," Kyle said, relenting easily. He took Stan's arm and held onto it. With this weight on his chest, Kyle remembered waking up in the middle of the night to Stan's nightmare-induced panic. After how perfect yesterday had been, it bothered Kyle that Stan had had one of his nightmares. It didn't seem fair, or right. He didn't have them every night, so why last night?

Still ruminating this, Kyle nudged Stan to get up, then rolled out of bed and began to get dressed.

They made it to the jungle a little after 5:15. Deep blue clouds hung in the sky like relics of the night, overshadowing the camp and making its sounds and movements dreary and slow. This transitional period between night and day was so much more painful in the proper direction. At least when Kyle experienced it at the end of a sleepless night, the guilt and aggravation of knowing he wouldn't wake until well past noon could be absolved by simply dropping his head onto the pillow. But now, despite how much the lazy and childish part of him wanted to go back to bed, the fact that he would be awake and busy during his normally wasted morning hours actually seemed somewhat enticing. Standing here, in the premature dawn, even the afternoon seemed far away. While of course this was true in terms of hours, what was so astounding to Kyle was how much _bigger_ a single day felt when seen from this angle.

He went on to ponder how the density of a single day might affect its size, his legs moving him forward in the breakfast line as it gradually progressed. He wasn't paying enough attention to be disappointed with the wateriness of the soup, or the staleness of the bread, or the murkiness of the coffee. After handing over a penny to the withered old woman for the meal, he drifted a few feet away from camp to where Stan was sitting, drinking his tin can of coffee, alone.

Wordlessly, he sat down next to him, letting their knees touch. He remembered Stan's nightmare again. Aware of where they were, he had to resist the urge to touch Stan's knee, or his shoulder, or his face, because he knew that from now on he'd only ever be able to touch him with the utmost of feeling, and thus, it would surely be obvious. Sighing, he understood he had to settle on words. "You okay?" he asked.

Chewing a mouthful of bread, Stan turned to look at Kyle with mild incredulity. Upon swallowing, he said, "Yep. Are you?"

Frustrating. "I'm fine," Kyle responded, sighing again.

Annoyed now, Kyle proceeded to eat his horrible-tasting breakfast with uncanny dedication, hatefully relishing the bitterness of the coffee and grating texture of the bread. He knew he was getting worked up when he really ought to be approaching this situation delicately and maturely, and probably not right now, either, but his mounting agitation had the unintended consequence of thoroughly rousing his mind and body, which was essential for the long day ahead. So he let himself be angry. He just made sure not to let himself _seem_ angry, because while he may have had enough energy for a fight, he didn't want to fight, not about this.

After breakfast, they left the jungle to head to the farm. A few other harvest hands were already there when they arrived, some adjusting the harnesses on the horses, others helping the farmer set up the binders. Hack waved at the farmer, who glanced at the four of them before asking, "You boys ready to work?"

"Yessir, Mr. Stevens," Hack replied with astounding politeness. Kyle nodded in support of this answer.

Once the binders were connected to the horses, they began work for the day. As it was a very large farm, there were four crews of five men each: two to operate the binders, and three shockers to collect the bundles. Hack and another farmhand drove their crew's binders, while Kyle, Stan, and Mole followed behind and shocked the freshly-cut and bound stalks. Given the circumstances, Kyle could not help but let his resentment toward Hack resurface. It seemed suspicious that he, of all people, should have both the skill and knowledge to operate a binder. Additionally, the fact that an actual farmer trusted someone like Hack with such complex machinery was confounding.

Nonetheless, Kyle could notice that, as far as he knew, Hack was doing a decent job. Grudgingly, he accepted that he was probably just looking for things to fuel his irritation, and Hack made a convenient target. Besides, even if Hack was a "skilled" laborer, at the end of the day, they were all just simple farmhands. And inevitably, the discrepancies between their "skills" only meant a few pennies. It wasn't really worth thinking about.

However, since the process of assembling the shocks was more mechanical than technical, Kyle did have plenty of time to think. With Stan at his side, sharing the same labor, Kyle naturally thought of him. (Stan was by default a worthwhile topic, too.) Watching Stan's body move in the early morning sunshine, and with such _ease_ , too, he felt blessed to know his other side, the real one, the one behind the eye patch.

But he didn't know it as well as he wanted to. There were some blanks, and only conjecture, weak by definition, could fill them in. And although it was reasonable to believe that Stan's nightmares were about the cop, there was little to deduce about their specific content, because dreams, especially nightmares, usually distorted reality. The details of the incident which Stan had told him were horrifying in and of themselves, thus, their dream-manifestations had to be worse. It weakened Kyle on a fundamental level to know that Stan relived such horror on a regular basis, scared and alone in his unconsciousness. Furthermore, Kyle didn't know what he could do to help, or if there even _was_ anything he could do to help. Situations in which he couldn't fathom a single good solution were as aggravating as they were rare. Clenching his jaw, he snatched up another bundle of wheat.

At eleven, all of the farmhands crammed into the farmer's dining room, where they were served pulled pork sandwiches and lemonade by the farmer's wife, who seemed to be perpetually frowning. His daughter, on the other hand, seemed to be perpetually smiling. Her long blond hair flopped over her shoulder when she went to refill an empty glass, and her voice, thick with a southern drawl, was obnoxiously chipper in response to the hobos' gratitude for the meal. Kyle hated her, and he scoffed at how easily these men turned to mush over a pretty girl. He took solace in the fact that Stan seemed to be paying her no attention, then focused on eating, determined to ignore her and enjoy his lunch.

An hour after returning to work, time began to drag. By two, Kyle was praying for rain, by three, he was shocking the grain with absolute carelessness, and by four, when the farmer finally, finally gave them their time and their pay, he was thoroughly, completely exhausted. He felt much worse than he had after that first day as a harvest hand, back at the farm in Hardin, where he had taken that training sabbatical. He knew it was probably because he'd been woken up in the middle of the night. For entirely selfish reasons this time, he hoped Stan would not have a nightmare tonight. At that moment, Stan rested his arm across Kyle's shoulders, tugging him a little closer and giving his bicep a squeeze. The guilt dripped down Kyle's throat and pooled in his stomach.

"You alright?" Stan asked. They were a few paces behind Hack and Mole, en route to town for dinner.

"Fine," Kyle said. "Just tired."

"You'll get used to it," Stan said.

Despite the fact it was only a little after four, the tavern, a dumpy establishment at the edge of town, was beginning to get crowded. The four of them got a table in the back corner. While they waited for their drinks (whiskey for everyone but Kyle, who was certain alcohol would send him straight to sleep), Kyle prayed they would be out of here quickly. All he wanted was to go home and dump a bucket of water on his head, then to lie naked in bed with Stan while his skin air-dried.

Hack grabbed his glass of whiskey the second the waiter set it down and took a loud swig. "Now, what I love about ol' man Stevens' farm is," he said, licking his lips, "that fine broad of a daughter he's got. I tell ya, I wouldn't mind bein' a home guard if I meant I could work here year-round."

"That's nice," Stan said, not even looking at Hack. Kyle snorted.

Hack frowned at both of them, his face scrunching up in pouty, childish way. Grumbling, he turned to look at Mole, who was slouching in the corner of the booth, his teeth clamped onto the rim of his empty glass as he tipped it up and down with his jaw. Hack let out a long, exaggerated groan and flagged down the waiter for a refill. "All's I'm sayin' is she's got some nice dugs," he said once the waiter had left. He sighed dreamily and Kyle cringed to think of where Hack's imagination was taking him. He ended up ordering a shot of whiskey when their food came.

The chicken was somewhat dry and the string beans overly greasy, but overall the food was good, although Kyle suspected his hunger made it taste better than it actually was. After paying for their dinner, they left. Trudging along the dusty streets of Ogden, Stan and Kyle conversed in facial expressions. Kyle tilted his head toward Hack and Mole and then looked at Stan demandingly. In response, Stan pursed his lips and lowered his head, eye flicking to the end of the road, where going right led to the jungle and going left led to the house. Disinclined to even twenty steps' worth of patience, Kyle grimaced at him. Stan relented, which was a relief, not only because Kyle was certainly not going to ask himself, but because he was glad that having the house to themselves was a mutual interest.

"So… You two goin' to the jungle?" Stan asked Hack.

"Well, yeah, for a bit," Hack said. "Gonna stop at the house first and pick up the coke. Hopin' we might be able to sell some."

"Oh, good," Stan replied. "Well, not _good_ , but whatever, I guess."

Hack shrugged and said, "Money is money."

Back at the house, Hack and Mole stuffed all the coke into an old potato sack. Hack saluted Stan before leaving, winking as he did so, and Kyle realized then that he _had_ to know about them. He didn't want to care about this, but he did. He wanted to ask Stan if he thought he knew, but not directly, so he said, "What was all that shit about that girl?"

They were on one of the sofas in the parlor, and Stan was pulling Kyle into his lap. "Who?" he asked, plainly more interested in getting Kyle closer than what he was saying.

"The farmer's daughter," Kyle replied, curt.

"Oh. I dunno," Stan said. "But who cares? Hack's just a horny bastard, s'all."

"Well so are we!" Kyle said, huffing.

Stan furrowed his brow. "What does that mean?" he asked, his hands falling away.

Kyle squeezed his eyes shut. He was tired, and it was hard to organize his thoughts. "It doesn't mean anything. I'm fine with being a horny bastard, if it's with you. What I'm not fine with is other people knowing."

"I think Hack's known for a while," Stan said after a moment.

Kyle rolled off of Stan and huddled in the far corner of the couch, burying his face in the armrest. "Well that's just great," he muttered.

"Kyle," Stan said, groaning. "I meant more about me. I think he figured it out when he found me throwin' up outside that whorehouse he and Craig took me to two years ago."

Despite himself, Kyle cracked a smile, glad his face was hidden so Stan couldn't see.

"So when you came along," Stan said, scooting closer to Kyle, "and with all the time we spend together, 'course he figured it out. But Hack ain't a bad guy." Quieter, he said, "I'm pretty sure he's happy for me."

Incredulous, Kyle peered over his shoulder to look at Stan.

Stan nodded to himself and said, "Yeah. Yeah, he is."

Embarrassed now for raking on Hack yet again, Kyle bit his lip and moved back over to Stan. "That – that's good then," he said lamely, patting Stan's knee in a way that immediately seemed ridiculous.

Stan put his hand over Kyle's and held onto it, then slowly looked up at him. He was still wearing the eye patch. Kyle removed it without hesitation, and held it with the same gentleness that Stan was holding his hand. "It must be hard to wear this all day," he said.

"It was at first. I was always a little off with judging distances. Then I got used to it." He rubbed his eye with his palm. "After wearing it all day, it takes about a couple minutes for my vision to go back to normal," he said, blinking and squinting a few times. "But it always comes back, so I'm not worried about it."

Kyle found this fascinating. "What's it like right after you take it off?"

"It's kinda like my left eye's tryin' to catch up to my right eye again, so things go in and out of focus. It's almost back now though," Stan said. "But um, anyway. I dunno how long we got til Hack and Mole come back, so do you want to…" He looked to the ceiling to finish the suggestion.

Kyle nodded – of course he wanted to. The prospect of intercourse had been in the back of his mind all day, hidden beneath his other concerns and worries, something too special (not to mention, too arousing) to even think about while he was working. Although he felt he should've brought up the nightmare, it was too late now: it would thwart the build-up (they were already kissing) and there was precious little time until Hack and Mole came back.

They hurried up the steps and into their bedroom, fumbling to get undressed. Once they were in bed, they slowed down. Kyle felt tired again, and appreciated the languid rhythm created by their movements, Stan's deliberate yet gentle, and Kyle's responding by absorption, taking each wave-like motion and letting it seep into his skin. He appreciated, too, Stan's greater confidence, that his Vaseline-slick fingers slipped unshaking beneath the sheets to touch Kyle's skin.

Kyle closed his eyes and let Stan's fingers tap away the strain and worry that his body had accumulated and borne throughout the day. He was hard, but not painfully so; his state of arousal was comparable to his state of drowsiness, although it did not quite match it, and he felt like he could drift off like this. Stan's fingers slide out, and then there were cooler, clean ones touching his face. "We can go to sleep," Stan said. Kyle knew he meant it, but there were hours and hours for sleeping, when it was dark and he would not be able to see Stan's eyes.

"No, I'm awake," Kyle said, flashing his eyes open to see two blue ones. "I am," he said again, then wound his hand down below to wrap his fingers around Stan's cock. Stan groaned, and Kyle's fatigue lost to his arousal.

Stan entered him slowly. Even though Kyle knew what to expect now, he still found himself in awe of what was happening. He held onto Stan's arm, watching his face as he arranged their connection, and hurried to set every detail in stone. He refused to forget the way Stan's eyes shut quickly, crinkling with a sudden surge of sensation, or the way his mouth opened just enough to let out a soft exhale. More important than these small details, however, was to remember how this actually was, and not just physically, the low pain which was giving way to a more enticing feeling, nor even emotionally, the overwhelming density of his love and empathy and adoration for Stan, but completely, because the only just way to conceptualize this was as a single whole.

Once Stan was completely inside him, Kyle sighed and dropped his head to the pillow. With his arms, he held onto Stan loosely, because they were now connected so securely that he did not feel the need to hold him tightly. The moments when they lay resting before they began were always heavy and slow, vying for movement, but loath to face it. Kyle could sense Stan's restraint as acutely as he could feel him throbbing inside him. He moved his head against Stan's, brushing his lips across his ear, then spoke to him in a short sound he uttered in the back of his throat, from whence came proto-words whose meaning depended on the most intimate of understanding.

Stan nodded, then raised himself up, planting his hands stiffly on either side of Kyle. In short, concentrated thrusts, he began to move. Kyle could feel the steady build-up within him, a feverish bubbling that grew with each careful glide, though for now, he could relish it without thinking of it. In and around him, Stan was beautiful, and Kyle was determined to memorize this, too, because right now, he embodied his truest and rawest beauty. Kyle abandoned literary transcription and took to recording it like a movie, but in color, with the rosy blush dusted across Stan's cheeks, and in sound, too, with his soft grunts and louder sighs. This approach seemed more durable than the flimsiness of words.

Satisfied now, Kyle dragged Stan to his chest, holding him there and rolling his hips encouragingly. Stan fumbled to wrap his arms around him, then held on tightly, as if afraid of what was coming. He buried a whimper into Kyle's shoulder as he clung to him, almost perfectly still except his for his hips, which pushed against Kyle as Stan drove into him again and again, all his composure gone. Only then, when Stan was consumed by it, did Kyle feel him brush against that place deep at the core of himself. When Stan thrust in again, the head of his cock moved against it with more pressure, and Kyle gasped, suddenly very hard and very much in need of more of it. Even if he had been able to form coherent words at this point, he didn't need to, because when Stan thrust inside him again, he rubbed so hard against that spot that Kyle came instantly, shouting as his whole body went rigid. His orgasm seemed to last minutes, crashing through him in waves stronger than he had ever experienced.

Stan was still brushing against that spot, and it was almost unbearable now, too much to handle. Kyle squirmed, moving his hips so that he was not touching it, and then, he was able to sense the subtle swelling of Stan's cock. He squeezed around him as tightly as he could. Stan let out an almost pained-sounding whimper, and he surged forward in short, arrhythmic bursts, pouring his orgasm into Kyle.

They lay still for some time, recovering. When Stan started slipping out, he pushed back in, until this was no longer possible, and they had to accept their separateness. It was still light outside, but at this hour, the sun wasn't strong enough to entirely permeate the curtains. The day was ending. Soon, it would be dark; soon, they would sleep; and soon, too, dream. Kyle wished he could simply invite Stan to spend the night in his dreams, where the worst thing that ever happened was his mother yelling about something. He hated the idea of Stan alone anywhere, even in his own mind.

"You scared me last night," Kyle said.

Stan touched his face. "I'm sorry."

"I mean I was scared for you. It seemed like you were dreaming something…horrible."

"It was, well. Y'know. About what happened in Idaho." He seemed embarrassed, and Kyle felt bad for bringing it up. "I don't dream about it that much anymore though," Stan said. "Just once in a while. But everyone has nightmares once in a while, yeah?"

"I guess so," Kyle replied.

"Don't worry about it. Okay?" Stan said, and even though Kyle couldn't in good faith, he agreed to anyway. The only reason his worry gradually diminished was because, at least to his knowledge, Stan didn't have any nightmares for a while after that.

* * *

The days became very similar. They woke up early and worked all day, sweating out the water they were constantly drinking. Four o'clock hung like an invisible marker somewhere in the sky, its outlines only becoming discernible once it felt like they had been out in the sun their entire lives. When it finally arrived, it did not feel like an accomplishment so much as mercy. In the later hours of the afternoon, they savored each minute of rest, conscious but not thinking of the fact that they would have to do it all again tomorrow.

Had there been more interest in cocaine in Ogden, Stan and Kyle would not have had deterrents to their preferred mode of relaxation, which was loud and obvious and tended to shake the whole house. But as it stood, this far south, the mere mention of snowdust was met with scoffing and racism. Hack only managed to sell one gram of the gigantic stash. Eventually, he and Mole stopped going to the jungle in the evenings, instead staying home to chain-smoke and drink cheap booze out by the well, which was right below Stan and Kyle's bedroom window.

As irritating as Hack and Mole's omnipresence was, they were hardly complete deterrents. There was very little that could have stopped Stan and Kyle from doing the one thing they salvaged their daily energy for. Thus, during these labor-heavy days of harvesting which ended in now (somewhat) quieter love-making, they had no energy left for the long, intense discussions that they used to have all the time.

On Wednesday of the second week of the harvest, it was pouring when Kyle woke up. He was so thrilled that he had to wake Stan up so he could tell him. Stan was shifting slightly in his sleep. He awoke with a sharp intake of breath and looked at Kyle bewilderingly. "What?" Kyle asked, bothered by that look. It occurred to him then that Stan may have been dreaming, and he cringed at the accusatory tone he had spoken with. "Are you alright?" he asked, much more gently.

Stan nodded. He had shut his eyes and was breathing heavily through his nostrils.

Afraid to know, Kyle hesitated before asking, "Were you dreaming?"

Stan nodded again, but solemnly this time, his brow furrowing as if it pained him to admit the truth. He put his arm over his head, covering his eyes.

"You can tell me anything, you know," Kyle said in a small voice he rarely used. He touched Stan's arm, feeling guilty, like he was prying, then hurt, because why didn't Stan want to tell him everything?

"I know," Stan said. He shuddered and then rolled onto his side, scooting down so he could bury his face in Kyle's chest. "I will. Later. I just want to sleep in for once," he said.

Kyle was satisfied with that: rest was scarce, and he was still tired, too. He pulled the quilt up over their naked shoulders and kissed the top of Stan's head, smelling the faint scent of soap. He had washed and trimmed Stan's hair yesterday, carefully clipping away the ends with a sleek pair of scissors they found in a drawer in the hall closet. Also in the hall closet, they found an extra set of sheets with which they (that was, Stan) had replaced their current sheets. (Even though Kyle made sure to wipe away all the come stains, this was not the same as washing the bedding, which just wasn't feasible here.) There was a sense of cleanness even beyond their bodies and the bedding; it was in the gray morning light, the clouds, and the rain, the density of the weather and the certainty of the little hand pointing at six; all of it filled the space around them, nullifying any possibility of nightmares.

They didn't get out of bed for some four hours, although only about half of this time was actually spent sleeping. Upon waking, they roused each other with slow kisses, sleepily grinding against each other. This evolved into their prior routine of manually masturbating each other, which Kyle was relieved to discover was still good. He had missed actively working Stan to completion, because although he could tense his muscles and squeeze around Stan when he was inside him, there was little precision in that, whereas with his fingers, he could touch Stan artfully and knowingly. Thus, when Stan came, thrusting into Kyle's hand and grunting behind clamped lips, Kyle was able to take this as a reflection of his skill.

He caught Stan's seed before any could get on the sheets. Feeling its warmth in his palm, he was struck with a sense of detachment, though it did not leave him melancholy, but rather, speculative. He watched Stan coming down from his climax, saw the twisting of his brow weaken and relax, and realized the significance of the fact that every visceral sensation Stan was feeling in this moment was exclusive to him. Even though they were still using their bodies to bring about each other's orgasms, these were personal orgasms, not the shared orgasms of intercourse, which were interwoven and synchronous, and allowed them to feel each other's pleasure in the intimate way that only joining their bodies could do.

Yet there was still something wonderful about seeing Stan have a personal orgasm, even if Kyle couldn't exactly figure out what it was. It had something to do with knowing another person besides himself, and also seeing Stan in isolation, because he, too, had existed and lived for years before that fortuitous day in Milan. Kyle didn't know the Stan who lived on a farm in Montana with his family, or the Stan who fled Idaho with Hack, or the Stan who had spent the winter rolling cigars on the other side of Chicago, and although that made him sad, what mattered more was that he knew him now, and that he would know him from now on.

* * *

The rain came down harder and the sky got darker. They were back in the room again after eating breakfast, and now they could hear the low rumbles of thunder coming in. They listened to it for a while, because it was more interesting than the _drip drip drip_ of the rain leaking through the ceiling and splattering into the pot they had brought up from the kitchen.

"Sometimes I get nervous," Stan said after a crack of thunder. They were lying in bed, wearing clothes now. The room was dark for daytime. "I can't get caught now." His tone was decisive, though when he turned to face Kyle, there was uncertainty in his eyes.

Stan getting caught had never seemed very likely to Kyle, but alarmingly, Stan's fear was very real. "Anytime I see a cop," he went on to say, "I can't help but think he's got an idea 'bout who I am."

"Even here?" Kyle asked.

"Yeah," Stan said.

"But we're so far away from Idaho."

"Well, yeah. But they talk to each other 'n stuff."

Although it was true Kyle knew next to nothing about how the police force worked, he still found Stan's tone annoying, which induced him to point out further evidence that Stan really had escaped the law: "It was four years ago, though."

"That doesn't mean I got away with anything," Stan said.

"So then why are they waiting to arrest you?"

Stan frowned and sat up, not facing Kyle. "They probably just haven't found the gun yet."

"Oh," Kyle said. "What happened to it?"

"Must still be out in those woods somewhere."

Kyle did not contend this, though he wasn't able to completely shake the feeling that he was seeing a side of Stan which wasn't completely rational. This was a frightening thought, and Kyle went through an array of justifications to negate it, eventually settling on believing that Stan was just more concerned than was probably necessary, which wasn't problematic, per se, considering how devastating it would be if he did get arrested. Despite this rationale, which was generally convincing, it now made Kyle uneasy to watch Stan put the eye patch on in the mornings. He couldn't help but wonder if perhaps he needed it too much.

* * *

The harvest was finally finished on the last day of June, and the next night, they caught out to Longview, where Hack said the harvest was at this point in the season. Already depressed to be leaving the house that had begun to feel like a home, Kyle was deeply put off to learn that the trip to Longview was not a straight shot, but instead required connections at two other stations. No one would be getting any sleep tonight.

Hack, drunk as usual, slapped Kyle on the back and said, "C'mon, Handle, ain't you all rested up from yer day off?"

Kyle glared at him hatefully, because no, he wasn't rested, and it was obnoxious that Hack felt the need to point out that he knew why. "Don't touch me," he snapped, to which Hack innocently put his hands up as he hobbled backwards in the direction of the tracks. He stumbled into Mole, who grunted, but grabbed onto Hack's arm to keep him from falling regardless.

"He's just drunk," Stan said.

"I don't like him commenting on those things."

Stan didn't say anything, so Kyle followed up with, "It's private."

"You're right," Stan said.

"Of course I'm right."

They rode west to Trinity, the first stop on the way to Longview. In the corner, in the dark, Stan and Kyle sat shoulder to shoulder, listening to the wheels speed up below them. "I wish we could just live in that house," Kyle murmured. "Don't you?"

Stan wrapped his arm around Kyle's shoulder, and said, "Yeah. But here's always next summer."

Kyle had meant more than that, though. He didn't care about that house, per se, even if it had been where he'd had one of the most significant experiences of his young life. He cared about the abstract idea of a house: blue lobelia in the window boxes that swayed sleepily on summer nights, because there was no next town, next farm, next job; mail on the kitchen table, letters and bills and even mail order catalogues addressed to them, because they were the ones who lived there; and a single bed, because they lived there together.

It was an abstract idea because it was so impossible. Even fairy tales seemed more probable. Kyle tried to determine why this fantasy, as surreal as it was, appealed to him so much. It couldn't just be that he and Stan were together in it, because they were together right now. So then he reasoned he must just be being greedy, wanting a nice house with prissy flowers garnishing the windows in _addition to_ Stan. It bothered Kyle that he could still find himself nostalgic for such stagnant living. He didn't really need it, did he?

Stan slumped against Kyle's side, softly, but it was enough for Kyle to get a hard sense of reality. With it came an edge of guilt, and with that, a feeling of dread: Stan was always giving him everything, and yet here in this boxcar, sleeping and snoring barely loud enough to hear, he seemed very much like a child. Kyle wondered if Stan was really able to see the two of them at that house in Ogden a year from now, or if he had promised such a thing without even thinking of the twelve whole months, the fifty-two whole weeks, that spanned between now and then.

Knowing Stan, he probably hadn't. Kyle predicted the year would pass with them catching out just like this, going from town to town, from job to job. Would anything ever change? Would they still be hobos at thirty, at forty? Unless things got miraculously better (like if they won the lottery and moved to Long Beach to play croquet all day) or horrendously worse (well, he wouldn't even speculate on that), that's exactly how it would be. Was that all their lives would ever amount to?

But maybe that kind of thinking was too bourgeoisie, inapplicable, and thus, useless in this environment. Maybe he still hadn't adapted completely to life on the road; he was still in the transitory phase. It was probably naïve of him to have anticipated that going from a highly sheltered, coddled lifestyle to one of absolute freedom would be easy. Everything, including adapting to a new life, was a process: time was needed as much as dedication. Kyle found this conclusion frustrating, but not entirely dissatisfying. He just hoped that by the end of the summer, after many more days of toiling in wheat fields and many more nights of trying to sleep on splintery boxcar floors, he would be hardened enough to exist comfortably within the realm of freedom, and thus, be strong enough to support Stan during his moments of weakness. If they were equally capable of sustaining each other, there would be no need for a foundation beneath their feet, or a roof above their heads.

Kyle rested a hand on Stan's head and the other on his shoulder, holding him securely. Stan was warm and heavy against his chest, and Kyle was determined to carry that weight. He would get stronger; it would get easier.

* * *

In Palestine, they transferred onto the Texas and Northern Railway to catch out to Longview. The sun was just beginning to rise when the train pulled into the station. They helped unload cargo, then made their way into town. The telltale heat of another June day was already beginning to brew as they traversed the streets in search of an inn. Longview was huge in comparison to Ogden, and it took them a while to even find the stem. By the time they found the inn, a tattered old building squashed between a pawn shop and a bar, Longview was beginning to start the day. A newspaper smacked the front patio as they went in.

No one, and least of all Kyle, was bothered by the dust or the cobwebs or the musty smell that hung in the air even after Stan opened the window. These were just less-than-ideal details, minor trade-offs that came with something as invaluable as absolute freedom. He fell asleep curled up against Stan almost happy that the sheets smelled vaguely like sweat and mildew.

Around two in the afternoon, they got up, ate breakfast, then went to see if the local farmers were out pitching for harvest hands. Strangely, there didn't seem to be many hobos around. There were some beggars and some bums, but no one who seemed to be a worker, and even worse, no one who seemed to be looking for workers.

"Are you _sure_ the harvest got all the way up here?" Stan asked Hack after about twenty minutes of fruitless searching.

Hack scratched his mess of a beard, his eyes still scanning the area. "That's what Sawpit told me," he said.

"Who the hell is Sawpit?" Stan asked.

"Some 'bo down in Odgen," Hack responded absently. Kyle was flabbergasted, actually – he thought that of all things, tracking the harvest was the one thing Hack could do right. The phrase, _"If you want something done right, do it yourself,"_ rang through his head, in the voice of the person he used to hear say it most. Kyle believed in the idea, mostly, but Hack messing up also meant that they now had time to kill while they waited for the wheat to ripen, which was a very attractive prospect.

"Well obviously Sawpit didn't know what he was talking about," Stan said, scowling at Hack.

"Guess not," Hack said. He dug out a cigarette from his back pocket and Mole rushed to light it, almost like a trained dog.

Stan was exasperated now. "Jesus, Hack, how fucking hard is it to find out where the harvest is? We spend enough time outta work durin' the summer as it is."

"Hey, you coulda been out askin' folks, too," Hack said.

Stan and Kyle, in unison, shot him dirty looks.

Kyle expected Hack would then back off, but instead, he lowered his head and pointed his finger at them in a distinctly authoritative way. "Then don't rag on me for makin' a mistake," he said, more so to Stan than to Kyle.

"Fine," Stan muttered. He dropped his gaze from Hack, which made Kyle uncomfortable in a way he couldn't exactly define. Maybe he had wanted to see them fight, so he could cheer Stan on and applaud him when he came off victorious.

"I'm gonna go scope out some farms and see how long it'll be 'til they're out lookin' for help," Hack said as they were approaching the inn. Then, in a tone that was annoyingly parent-like, he added, "The two of you are welcome to come."

Kyle's eyes darted to the inn – specifically, the window of their room – and he tried to fabricate an excuse so that he and Stan could get out of this, but before he could decide whether checking the beds for mites or making sure the door was locked sounded more plausible, Stan said, "Alright, fine. Let's go."

"What?" Kyle said, giving Stan a very offended look that he hoped conveyed, _"Do you not want_ _to have intercourse with me? Is_ that _it?"_

Stan looked at Kyle apologetically. Although his expression read, _"Yes, of course, always! But what am I supposed to do here?"_ Kyle remained annoyed with him regardless.

He was in a bad mood all afternoon: it was hot, he was hungry, and the farm they went to was a good ten miles outside of town. The only good thing that happened was that they found out the wheat wouldn't be ripe for another week, granted it didn't rain. However, this presented the issue of where they would stay in the meantime. As dumpy as the inn was, it would still be expensive to stay there for a whole week. Kyle was quick to point out that they had stayed at more expensive lodging houses in Milan and New Orleans, also during periods of unemployment. "Well that's like our vacation," Stan explained when they were finally eating lunch at 4 o'clock. "After workin' all winter it's nice to pretend we're rich for a week. 'Sides, it's still pretty cold at night 'til you get real far south." Some sauce dribbled down the corner of his mouth and Kyle had to squash the beginnings of an erection by crossing his legs.

"So then what, we're sleeping outside again?" Kyle asked in a voice low enough that only Stan could hear, not that Hack and Mole were paying attention anyway.

"What's wrong with sleeping outside?" Stan asked. He was sincere, shockingly enough. "It's not cold. We can set up our own camp away from them." He eyed Hack and Mole, who were engaging in some sort of noisy drinking game.

Kyle strained to block Hack and Mole out so he could come up with a discrete way of explaining this to Stan. "Look," he said, not making eye contact with Stan, "doing what we were doing before was fine out in the woods, but now that we're doing something much more, ah, _involved_ , I would prefer that we have actual accommodations."

Stan scratched his jaw. Kyle felt his face getting hot. "It'd really be that bad outside?" Stan asked.

"Yes!" Kyle hissed. "So let's just stay at the inn, okay? I'll pay for it, of course."

"Just us?" Stan asked, his eye flashing to Hack and Mole again.

"Just us," Kyle said, firm.

Stan licked his lower lip and said, "Well, I guess that'd be alright," which was conclusive enough for Kyle. He didn't realize until after dinner when they were walking around town and Stan took Hack aside, saying he wanted to talk to him about something, that Stan was always going to ask Hack for 'permission.' Kyle knew he should've expected as much. He planned to cause a scene if Hack said no.

Fortunately, Hack was agreeable, though plainly not enthusiastic about Stan and Kyle staying at the inn by themselves, which pleased Kyle immensely. The four of them went back to the inn and cleared out the double room before checking out. Down in the lobby, Kyle put down the money for a week's stay in a single room. He planned for him and Stan to say longer, throughout the harvest, but he would worry about getting Stan on board with that idea later.

"So I'll see you tomorrow?" Stan asked Hack as he and Mole were leaving.

Hack patted Stan on the shoulder and said, "Yeah, 'course."

Kyle wrinkled his nose. He had been hoping not to see Hack and Mole at all until they started work. "Well, it's getting late, so," he piped up, "Goodnight." He knew he was being rude, but it's not like he was kicking them out into the cold – it was at least seventy-five degrees outside.

Mole narrowed his eyes. Kyle pretended not to notice. Hack chucked, shaking his head, then saluted Stan before they finally, finally left.

Stan was quiet as they went up to their new room on the second floor. Kyle knew it was because Hack wasn't around, which annoyed him because it hurt him that Stan was so dependent on Hack. When they got to their room, Kyle sat on the edge of the single bed and lay back, wondering what he could do to get Stan to see him in the way he saw Hack. Stan fell onto the bed next to Kyle, facing him. Kyle turned to him and wondered, briefly, if being the "lover" instead of the "beloved" for once might change things between them. If he wanted for them to depend on each other equally, wouldn't it make sense for the most intimate aspect of their lives to reflect that as well? Maybe. But it's not like Stan and Hack had ever had intercourse (Kyle cringed at the thought), so there had to be a better solution because Kyle really didn't want to be the "lover."

"What do you think of me?" Kyle asked, his voice flat, somewhat cold.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, do you think of me as a dependable person?"

"'Course I do. Why?"

Kyle rolled onto his stomach and rested his chin on his forearms. He didn't want to get into the topic of Hack. He didn't want to hear from Stan that he needed Hack. So Kyle said, "I just don't want to feel like a liability." It was an exaggeration of his point, but he suspected it would garner pity from Stan, though he shouldn't even want any.

"I've never thought of you like that," Stan said, plainly very bothered, contrary to Kyle's expectations.

Kyle sat up and touched Stan's arm. "Sorry. I didn't mean to say you did."

But Stan remained uneasy. His brow furrowed deeply, he finally looked at Kyle and said, "I'm the liability though. You know that, Kyle."

It took Kyle a moment to remember that in Stan's mind, getting arrested was very plausible. Kyle wasn't sure what to say then. He certainly wasn't going to get into that whole argument again. But the air in the room was so hot all of the sudden and he felt he had to say _something_ , so he said, "I'd make them arrest me, too," even though he wasn't so sure he would.

Stan looked at him. "You have to do something for them to arrest you though."

"Then I'd rob a bank," Kyle said.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

Stan sighed and put his arm around Kyle.

* * *

The next morning, they woke up late from a long night of intercourse during which they had to be absolutely silent, considering how thin the walls were. (It was downright infuriating for Kyle to have to bite his hand when Stan thrust into him in such a way that made him ache to moan.) After they both showered, shaved (not that Kyle really had much to shave), and got dressed, they left to get breakfast, as it was too late to get breakfast in the kitchen. Horribly, they found Hack and Mole right outside the inn, apparently waiting for them. The four of them ended up going to a place called Milo's Diner two blocks away, which was having a 4th of July special. This is what happened the next day, the day after that, and then the day after that. Kyle only put up with it because it wasn't too hard to fabricate some sort of excuse for him and Stan to ditch them, and dealing with Hack and Mole for an hour a day was by far more manageable than a whole day.

On Tuesday, three days before the harvest, Kyle noticed on the way to breakfast that there were a lot more hobos in town. The diner was also more crowded. Once they were done eating, Hack said, "Welp, guess we're gonna go see if there's a market for this stuff here." He had the potato sack full of coke on his lap and was patting it like it was a prized pig at the county fair.

"We could just keep it for ourselves," Mole muttered, the first complete sentence Kyle had heard him say in days.

Hack side-eyed him and said, "Why do I always have to tell ya to think about the big picture, huh?"

Mole traced a square on the table and frowned at it.

Kyle figured this had to do with Hack's grand scheme to create a small fortune out of a few dozen grams of coke. He didn't really care to hear about it; he was just glad that for once he didn't have to invent some unlikely plans that he and Stan had to attend to (like buying soap) so they could get away from them.

After breakfast, Hack and Mole set off to the jungle and Stan and Kyle decided to go to the library. Downtown, too, was more active and bustling than usual: the streets were swamped with packs of hobos, with farmers recruiting them, with disgruntled townspeople. Also, alarmingly, there was a significant number of policemen, a few on horses, but most on foot, all of them clad in the same black uniform and the same black hat. There were whistles blowing, and Kyle saw that the police were trying to move the crowds off the street so a trolley could get through.

"Maybe we should go back to the inn," Stan said, slowing his pace until he eventually stopped. His eye jumped from black hat to black hat.

"Relax," Kyle said. "We're not doing anything." He ended up having to tug on Stan's arm to keep him moving. They weaved through the crowd, Kyle practically dragging Stan until they got to the corner of block. They went up High St. then made a left onto W. Cotton.

The librarian was at the main desk sorting through call cards. She scowled when they came in and said, "This is a library, not a hotel."

"What?" Kyle said, genuinely perplexed.

"You may not sleep here," she said, tight and uncompromising as the button-up blouse that looked like it was choking her.

Kyle wasn't hearing Stan say that they should just leave; he was glaring at this unrightfully pompous buffoon of a librarian, fighting the urge to launch a string of curse words at her. He restrained himself though: straightening his posture, told her, "While it may be difficult to keep myself from nodding off as I peruse your likely very dated and unenlightened collection, I promise I'll try my best."

"Is that so?" she said, glowering at Kyle.

"Yep."

The librarian obviously couldn't think of a response. Kyle smiled at her, his heart fluttering with victory, then marched over to the non-fiction section, hoping his comment wasn't so true that he wouldn't be able to find anything interesting.

"She's going to come kick us out," Stan murmured once they were safely out of her hearing range.

Kyle was on his tip-toes, reading through the call numbers of the books on the top shelf. "No she's not. She doesn't _own_ the library, St–." He cut himself off before he said Stan's name, then, sighing, crouched down to the bottom row of books in the next case, nearly at call number 150 now. "Just stop worrying, please," he said as sympathetically as possible. "It'll be fine, I promise."

"If you say so," Stan said, unconvinced. Kyle rolled his eyes instead of responding. So much for trying to be understanding.

The only book with call number 150 was James' two volume _Principles of Psychology_ , and Kyle wondered with dread if he had jinxed himself by telling off the librarian. (At Everly's library, where Kyle used to spend a significant portion of his free time, he had flipped through both volumes before shoving them back on the shelf (in the wrong spot.) It was beyond his reasoning, and also offensive, that anyone should make inferences about human behavior – especially sexual behavior – based on the behavior of cats, frogs, birds, etc.) He went back to the beginning of the 100s section to see if this sad excuse of a library at least had a copy of _The Symposium_ , thinking it would be a good distraction for Stan, but of course it didn't – this was Texas, after all. _The Trial and Death of Socrates_ could have been a decent alternative, but Kyle realized, glumly, that it was probably an inappropriate choice considering Stan's heightened level of anxiety. So instead they went to the non-fiction section. Kyle picked out _The Amateur Gentleman_ and _The Crossing_ and Stan picked out _Burning Daylight_ and _Prester John._

They headed back through the rows of bookshelves to the front desk, Kyle trailing behind Stan and flipping through _The Crossing_ , when Stan suddenly stopped and Kyle, unaware, crashed into him. Before Kyle was able to say anything though, he saw why Stan had stopped: speaking with the librarian at the front desk was a cop. Kyle nearly dropped his books. The librarian noticed them, a hint of a smirk tracing over her lips before she turned back to the cop. It was then that Kyle realized she had proven the extent of her idiocy by calling the police. Infuriating, but he would handle this; he would live up to that nickname in the vein of poise and control, even if that hadn't exactly been how he'd earned it.

"Relax," Kyle said to Stan, not moving his lips. Staring the librarian down, he put his books on a nearby shelf and strode toward to the front desk. Stan followed, thank God. Kyle just prayed he wouldn't start panicking.

"I asked them to leave multiple times," the librarian told the cop. "They've been here all morning and won't leave."

The cop, a tired man of maybe forty, turned to them and asked, "That true?"

Kyle wanted to argue that even if it were true, there was nothing illegal about spending that much time in the library, and besides, the librarian couldn't just tell people to leave because she didn't like them. But he could hear how hard Stan was breathing, and he knew arguing could be damning. "No, Officer. We've only been here about twenty minutes. And she never asked us to leave."

"He's lying," the librarian said.

The cop glanced at her, then looked back at Stan and Kyle. He crinkled his brow, and tilting his head in Stan's direction, asked, "What's wrong with him?"

"Oh, he just ate something bad," Kyle said quickly, at which point he realized they had a completely true alibi. "We were just at breakfast, actually, at Milo's. You can go ask them, they'll tell you we were there."

The cop dragged the palm of his hand down his face, groaning, and said, "Look, we got enough on our hands as is. So as long as I don't hear about you boys again, I'm willin' to let this one slide. Just don't come back to the library, and don't go makin' trouble anywhere else. You got that?"

On the inside, Kyle was fuming. Between gritted teeth, he forced himself to say, "Yes, officer."

"Alright, good," the cop said. "Now get outta here." He flung a loose fist over his shoulder, in the direction of the door. Shaking with rage and the humiliation of defeat, Kyle took Stan by the wrist and left, feeling in his fingers that Stan was shaking, too.

"I feel sick," Stan said once they were outside. He was pale, sweating, and looked like he might throw up any minute.

Kyle was afraid what would happen if the cop left the library to see Stan vomiting in the middle of the street. "Can you make it back to the inn?" he asked. They had at least ten blocks to go.

Stan teetered on his feet; Kyle steadied him, trying to keep him walking. "I'unno. I guess."

Those ten blocks in the burning afternoon were hell, the road seeming to stretch into eternity. "Almost there," Kyle kept saying, "Almost there," and by the time they made it to the inn and Stan scrambled up the steps to the bathroom, the words continued to ring in his head as if they still weren't true.

Kyle stood in the lobby, dazed and drenched in sweat. It took him a moment to remember to go upstairs. At the top of the steps, he could hear Stan throwing up from all the way down the hall. He felt sick himself as he went to the door, because he'd been the one to tell Stan to relax, that it was fine, nothing would happen. But then again, this wasn't really his fault. It was that bitch librarian's.

Stan threw up again and then there was a break. Kyle knocked on the door and said, "Stan? Are you okay?" All he heard was heavy, sick-sounding panting. He wondered if he should go in. That seemed intrusive though. "Um. I'll be out here. Okay?" Stan mumbled something he couldn't make out, but it seemed affirmative, so a tiny bit of Kyle's worry diminished. He sat on the floor next to the bathroom and waited. Although it was the least of his problems, he thought of those library books they weren't able to check out and got annoyed all over again. He pictured himself kicking the librarian over Niagara Falls in a barrel, the barrel cracking on a razor-sharp rock and – well, maybe that was too much. He did wish she would just die though.

The toilet flushed. A few more minutes passed. Kyle didn't hear Stan dry heaving anymore. Eventually, Stan came out of the bathroom, looking less pale, and somewhat less ill, but still very shaken. "Do you feel any better?" Kyle asked.

"Sorta," Stan said. "Gonna go lie down."

In their room, Stan dropped himself on to the bed and curled up on his side. Kyle drew the curtains shut. He wished they had a fan. It was hotter in here than outside, where at least there was the occasional paltry breeze.

"I'm going to go get you some things," Kyle said, touching Stan's arm. "I'll be right back, okay?"

"What?" Stan said, almost panicked. He grabbed Kyle's wrist. "Where're you goin'?"

"I'm just going downstairs," Kyle replied, disturbed by Stan's reaction. He pulled his wrist away and said, "I'll be right back."

"Okay," Stan eventually said.

Kyle went down to the lobby in a daze. He remembered Stan telling him how he thought every cop knew about him, how they were just waiting to arrest him until they found the gun. Nothing made Kyle more uneasy than the idea that there was something seriously flawed with Stan's thought process, and that, he supposed, is why he had had tried so hard to dismiss the possibility.

At the front desk he got some fresh towels, and in the kitchen, some crackers and two tall glasses of water. He drank one of them there, then refilled it, not realizing how thirsty he'd been. He went back upstairs then, the water sloshing around in his stomach. When he got back to the room, Stan was lying on his back, staring at the ceiling. He looked unsettled; Kyle hoped he wouldn't be sick again.

Kyle dampened a washcloth then folded it in thirds. "Here," he said, draping it across Stan's forehead.

"We should pro'ly go find Hack," Stan said.

"What, why?"

"I'm not sure it's safe for us to be here anymore."

Kyle sat down on the edge of the bed. He didn't know how to tell Stan he was wrong; there was no reason for them to leave. "Stan," Kyle began, speaking evenly, "let me ask you something: do you trust me?"

"'Course I do. Why?"

"So, if I were to tell you that we don't need to leave, would you trust me on that, too?"

"What do you mean?" Stan asked, almost suspicious.

"That cop didn't know who you were," Kyle said. He was trying to break this to him gently. "He really didn't."

With abrasiveness Kyle wasn't expecting, Stan responded, "And just what makes you so sure?"

"Because he didn't arrest you."

"I told you about the gun," Stan muttered.

Oh, right, the gun, because surely a cop would never arrest a hobo without solid proof of his guilt. Kyle struggled not to roll his eyes. This was difficult, Stan could be difficult. Kyle tried to appeal to his logic: "Well if they haven't found it yet, what does it matter if we stay?"

Stan huffed. "I don't know, Kyle, I guess it doesn't!" he snapped.

It was absurd how angry he was. Kyle was actually sort of hurt by it, but maybe Stan was blaming him for the ordeal at the library, for not listening to him when he said they should go back to the inn. He was wrong, of course, so he could sit here and be wrong. Kyle didn't want to bear the brunt of his misplaced anger. "Fine," he said. "I'm going to the store. Do you need anything?"

Stan's face went from angry to worried, but only for a second. "Get some booze," he said in a way that was so annoying to Kyle he had no qualms in responding with, "But weren't you just sick?" in the most obnoxiously paternalistic voice he could muster.

"Fine then, forget it. Jesus," Stan retorted. He rolled onto his side then, facing away from Kyle.

Sighing, Kyle got up and got ready to leave. "I won't be gone long," he said, not expecting a response. He got one though: a barely audible, mumbling, "Be careful."

It was only a little after noon. There was a real grocery store in Longview, back on the main street. Kyle started walking. He could get some cold cuts – not a lot, just enough for lunch – a loaf of bread, maybe some apples. And booze, of course, maybe wine, but for later, when Stan was feeling better. Stan wouldn't be mad when he came back. Even if they lived in that house that didn't exist, the one with the blue lobelia, they would still have arguments, they would still make up and then get on with their lives. Only the circumstances of their reality were different, not the essence of what they had together. It was a harder life, true, but that only meant their cohesion was more important, since it was all they had.


	7. Chapter 7

They had been bickering since they woke up. Stan wouldn't budge. "Just tell 'em I'm hungover," he said.

"What about tomorrow?" Kyle asked. "Or when we have to go to the farm?"

Stan groaned. "I don't know! Tell them the real reason then, I don't care."

Kyle wanted to say, _"What's the real reason? That you're paranoid?"_ but he held back and just said, "Fine." There wasn't any convincing Stan, so Kyle wasn't going to try anymore. But it didn't mean he had to stay cooped up in their room all day, too. So he left.

Hack and Mole were waiting outside the inn. "Where's Swarm?" was the first thing Hack said.

"I couldn't get him to leave," Kyle had to say.

Hack took his cigarette out of his mouth and frowned. "'Cuz of all the cops?"

"Well, yes," Kyle admitted, shifting. He didn't want Hack to go up and talk to Stan. He didn't want it to be Hack who was able to convince Stan to leave.

Hack sighed and said, "Mole, go get your own breakfast today. I gotta talk to Handle about somethin'."

Mole looked like he'd been slapped. He opened his mouth to say something, but was apparently speechless. Then he turned to glare at Kyle with such hatred that Kyle had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing.

"Quit that," Hack said to Mole. "Christ."

Mole slumped a little and mumbled something about an omelet.

Hack handed over the potato sack to him. "Can I trust you with this?" he asked.

"Yeah," Mole replied, low and sad.

"Just go to the jungle," Hack said, putting his hand on his shoulder. "I'll be around later."

As he was leaving, Mole muttered, "Wanted an omelet," and Kyle almost felt bad for him. Almost.

Hack and Kyle went down to Milo's. Kyle realized that this was the first time he had ever been alone with Hack. It put him on edge somewhat, especially when he thought about the very premise of the situation, that there was something Hack wanted to tell him in private, something about Stan, most likely.

When they got to Milo's, Hack told the man at the counter that they'd be getting their breakfast to-go. They sat at the counter and waited. "That guy never gives me a break," Hack said.

At first Kyle thought Hack was talking about Stan. "Who, Mole?" he asked.

"Who else?" Hack said.

Out of politeness, Kyle sought to supply something else to the exchange, but this was difficult, as he made it a point to avoid thinking about what went on between Hack and Mole. So he asked, "Isn't he like twenty-something though?" believing the question benign enough.

"He's older than me actually," Hack said.

"Wait, what? Really?"

"Well, just by a few months. He's gonna be twenty-four in August."

Kyle gaped at Hack. It was mindboggling to him that a twenty-three year old man should be so childishly dependent, especially on the rails, where independence was integral. "Is he … mentally-deficient or something?"

Hack tilted his head and seemed to consider this, as if for the first time. "No, I don't think so," he said, though he didn't sound sure. Kyle would have asked him why not, but just then, the man behind the counter put their breakfasts in front of them then, two sytrofoam containers with one yellow check on top. Hack handed over a nickel before Kyle even realized that their meals had been rung up together.

"Why'd you do that?" Kyle rasped, watching helplessly as the man deposited the coin in the cash register. "Mine was more expensive!" He felt bad; there was no reason for Hack to treat him.

"Me and Mole made some money the other day," Hack replied, unfazed by Kyle's reaction.

Kyle couldn't get Hack to let him pay him back. So he gave up, making a mental note to reciprocate at some point in the future, with candy or cigarettes or something. Not booze, even though Kyle was beginning to realize that Hack drank as much as any hobo; it was just that he and Stan drank comparatively less.

They left Milo's to eat their breakfast a little outside of town, to the west, in a shallow patch of woods. There were cigarette butts lying around, Kyle noticed, some squashed into the bark of an old log. Hack plopped down on the ground, his back to the fallen tree; Kyle did the same, and then they ate their breakfasts: Hack, an egg sandwich, and Kyle, one of his two pancakes.

After eating, Hack dug out a dinged-up metal flask from his jacket. He took a swig of it, then stared ahead, in the direction of town, then said, "I'm guessin' Stan's told you 'bout what happened Idaho."

"Yeah. A while ago," Kyle said. The entirety of his attention was on Hack's words, ready to hang on them.

"That's good. Good that he has somebody like you he can trust." Hack was silent for a moment, pensive, more serious than Kyle had ever seen him. "I thought he was gettin' better. Over the winter he was doin' pretty good. You came along and he's been better than I've seen him in years. He even wanted to stay in that inn with you, knowin' the place'd be swamped with town clowns." Hack sighed and shook his head. "I just don't wanna think he took one step forward two steps back."

Kyle felt like a rag being rung out, still damp but unable to drip any more water. "It's not just because of all the cops in town. Something happened yesterday," he said, and then, he confessed: "This librarian called the cops on us. We weren't even doing anything, she was just a bitchy old hag, she had a cop come and she lied to him, she said we'd been there all morning, that we wouldn't leave. We left – he let us leave – and Stan was –" Kyle paused; he took in a breath of hot dense air that did nothing. "I've never seen him like that before."

Hack nodded and Kyle perceived in this gesture an acute understanding. Hack didn't blame him. "He alright now?" Hack asked.

"Yeah. I mean – I guess. He won't leave the inn though… as you know," Kyle said, mumbling the last part. He remembered that bad night in New Orleans, Hack saying that Stan was okay, but only depending on the definition of the word. "He thinks all these cops know. That they're just waiting 'til they find that gun."

Hack was listening, his fingers twisting the cap of the flask open and closed. "He's got bull horrors. 'Course he had reason to four, five years ago. I was scared too then, catchin' out with somebody who was hot. I'd always be tellin' him we had to keep an eye out for road bulls, that we couldn't stay in one place for too long." Jaw jutting out, he licked his lower lip, brow crumpled as he shook his head. "It wears on ya. But s'not like I coulda left him." A pause, and then, "'Course everybody thought I was just some pervert jocker takin' advantage of this kid, that kinda shit –" He cut himself off and glanced at Kyle, albeit briefly, then cleared his throat before continuing. "Well. Anyway. Two years ago we were catchin' outta Jackson and I fucked up and got us all sloughed – he tell you about that?"

"Um, sort of. Not really." Stan had mentioned it back in Milan, but hadn't gone into detail.

"Well that night, I was drunk outta my mind, not bein' quiet, not listenin' when he's tellin' me to shut the fuck up. Then this bull fucker catches us – us bein' me, Stan and that Pearly guy – drags us outta the damn car and brings us to the station. I'm thinkin' shit, what've the fuck've I done, now we're all goin' to the jug 'cuz I'm an alkee stiff bastard." Hack squeezed his eyes shut; he looked so much older than twenty-three. "Stan couldn't even talk. He just shook. We sat all night in that cell. I thought that was it, that in the mornin' the Chief would come back and say, _'We been lookin a long time for this cop-killer.'_ But, thing is, he just let us go. So we high tail it outta there, me thankin' my lucky stars. Stan was mad as hell, a'course, wouldn't stop givin' me grief about it. That was when I started thinkin'… Maybe he ain't really wanted by the law. Maybe nobody's lookin' for him. I never saw any posters, never even heard about the case. More I thought about this, more sense it made. So. I told him."

"What? You did? What did he say?"

"Well," Hack said, "he got mad. Real mad. That's when he started tellin' me about that crazy gun stuff. I told him – y'know, nicely – that none of it made any damn sense. He straight-up ignored me for a couple days there. Pearly'd gone back to Tennessee, and first thing Stan says when he decides to talk to me again is how come I didn't go with him."

"Well what did you say?" Kyle asked, pained by the anecdote.

Hack frowned and said, "I told him I wouldn't do that to him. So then a'course he goes on about how dumb I am for that, 'cuz now they're closin' in on us, and I thought, good Lord, I've messed up this kid's head. He believes all this crazy stuff 'cuz of me."

"And you haven't tried to fix it?" Kyle said, his voice rising, unable to stop it. "You've had two years to undo the damage and you haven't _done_ anything?"

"I've tried!" Hack said, the blue of his eyes clear and emphatic. "I've tried hundreds of times," he said, defeated by the very truth of his words. "He won't have any of it. He just gets mad." Hack's nostrils whistled as he inhaled; it even sounded sad, like a broken weathervane. When he spoke again, it was even sadder: "All I ever wanted to do was help him."

Although Kyle wanted to, he couldn't manage any anger towards Hack. He couldn't possibly denounce him for nurturing Stan's paranoia, because Hack had only wanted to keep Stan safe; he had never anticipated the consequences. He looked so forlorn, too, so clearly tormented by what he had unknowingly done, hunched over with his back to the long, his face the face of a man who had seen failure in the last place he wanted to find it, within the very person he had meant to protect. It was the face of inconsolable guilt, guilt with no hope of retribution, and it made Kyle bitter; he couldn't stand to believe there was no way of reversing the damage.

"There must be _something_ we can do," Kyle said, detaining his frustration. "Something other than telling him he's wrong."

"Like what?" Hack said, and he seemed so skeptical that Kyle took it personally, both for Stan's sake and the sake of his own intelligence. His offense was stamped out when he realized he had no response, no example or suggestion to propose. He wasn't going to endorse the idea that some problems had no solutions by conceding with a pathetic "I don't know", so the only thing he could do then was sit back and try to untangle some marginally plausible answer from the heap of impossible ones.

Hack spoke up, interrupting his thoughts: "Only thing that seems to work is keepin' him as far away from the police as possible."

"That's not always practical," Kyle pointed out. "And besides, it's just avoidance."

"I didn't say it was practical," Hack said. He took his flask, shook it and frowned, then poured its emptiness out over the dirt. "Maybe he just needs more time."

Time. In a quarter of an hour, Kyle was back at the inn and Stan was at the windowsill, smoking, his head out the window as puffs of smoke wafted their way back into the room. He hungrily ate the other pancake and Kyle fought back tears at the sheer normalcy of watching the boy he loved eat breakfast. When his tears inevitably did begin to fall, Stan asked him, perplexed, what was wrong, and Kyle told a different truth, blubbering that he'd missed him lately, that he hated all the fighting. They had intercourse, and Kyle cried more, because it was absurd how perfectly they could understand each other now whereas other times they could hardly understand each other at all.

In two days, they left the inn before dawn and did not come back. They slept near the farm and had intercourse anyway, out in the open, usually without speaking, because the days were long and exhausting again.

In two weeks, they left Longview for Talco, where there were no streetcars, no fancy diners, and no armies of black-hatted policemen. Stan was fine, and things between them were fine, good even, but never again as they were in Milan or New Orleans or even Ogden, when Kyle was ignorant and things were perfect. Stan still had nightmares, and Kyle still doubted what Hack had said. Stan was suffering, and it seemed unjust to leave his betterment to the idle passage of time. So, as Kyle held Stan beneath starry night skies, rocking away the lingering traces of vicious dreams, he began to devise a realer solution, one he could see and plan and perhaps one day implement.

But he knew this plan would only ever be practical in an ideal world. Furthermore, it would require him to alter the circumstances of his life, meaning he would lose, at least for a little while, the very person he wished to help. Thus, Kyle fell back on time again, acknowledging that it was barely any more satisfying. He held onto the minutes and hours and days, surviving on the hope that they would abolish the fear that dwelled in Stan's mind. Despite this desperation for rationale, or perhaps because of it, Kyle sometimes had a disturbing amount of success in tricking himself into believing that Stan was indeed getting better. He would have to look at Stan and force himself to remember why his left eye was hidden, blinking and functioning in blackness, only ever allowing him to see half of the world. In that unseen half, Kyle would look up at the blazing blue sky and wonder if God still existed for them. He would conclude that he probably didn't, for they had broken so many rules, both alone and together.

July melted into August and the summer beat on. Kyle started smoking, and he and Stan began to drink more, a lot more, nearly to the point of regular hobo standards. They had careless and sloppy intercourse, drunk in each other's arms in outlying fields choked with undergrowth, in tangled groves littered with rotted fruit, in the thin shadow of an adolescent tree, in Oklahoma, in Kansas, in Nebraska, in the Dakotas, in loneliness, in fear, in habitude, in desperation, and once, in aggression.

That was when Kyle had the horrible thought that he didn't really know Stan, and that was the deeper pain. He let out a sob and Stan pulled out as abruptly as he had gone in, leaving Kyle only with the ache of the lesser pain, because he did know the Stan who stared at him in shock of himself, horrified by the awareness that he had stepped outside the lines of what was appropriate. In the dim red of the night, Kyle saw the tears running down his face.

Stan's jaw was shaking when he choked out a crumpled, broken, "I'm sorry." It would be the first of hundreds of apologies, though Kyle forgave him, immediately, with this one. "I – Kyle –" he began to say, but then he covered his face with his hands and dropped to the earth, sobbing brokenly. "I'm sorry, I'm so, so sorry," he said again and again, wailing the words out with a drunken slur.

Kyle was calm as he stood up. He pulled his slacks up and walked over to Stan, then knelt before him and draped his arms over his back. "Shh, it's alright," he said. "I'm fine, it's okay."

Stan stopped sobbing for a moment, then took his hands away, the wetness of his face meeting Kyle's neck. "How can you forgive me?" he asked weakly. It was a sincere question, torn with incredulity.

The answer was simple. "Because I love you," Kyle said, and Stan broke out bawling.

After that, Kyle decided they would stop drinking, and Stan agreed. Inevitably, the alcohol was replaced with more cigarettes. Stan was despondent for a few days after the incident, inconsolable and refusing to participate in any activity that was remotely sexual, kissing included. Wildly irritated with him, but mostly insane with frustrated desire, Kyle demanded, shouting, that Stan forget about that night entirely, even going as far as to say, "It didn't hurt any more than the first time we tried it," though that wasn't entirely true. Regardless, Stan conceded, and Kyle was satisfied.

They continued north with the man who could never in a million years give up his alcohol and the animal man who longed for the dead master that the former could not replace. Kyle's doubts floated back to the looser and less important spaces of his mind, for he and Stan seemed to exist on similar planes again. Both of them felt certain they had been strengthened by their problems and that they now knew each other more completely. They would spend the dragging days between jobs discussing Socrates like he was an old friend, talking about memories from school, the disaster that was Kyle's bar mitzvah, the single stone that marked the grave of a dog that Stan had so dearly loved…

That summer seemed to belong to a different time. There were simply no similar terms under which Kyle could consider both his past and his present. Thus, calling his mother would have been impossible, not because the call was too far to ever connect, which was true, but because it would be like calling someone from a different dimension. This separateness remained unquestionable in Kyle's mind even as he shocked the last American wheat of the season and even as he crossed an invisible line beyond which there were few jobs left. It was September, and he was unaware that with the end of summer would come the threat of convergence.

They were in Ste. Agathe, Manitoba, at the local jungle, doing laundry after the last day of the season's last harvest. The air was lukewarm, palatable and too kind, missing something. No one had spoken in a while when Hack said, "Man, I can't wait to get back to Hobohemia."

Mole grunted in affirmation. Stan said nothing. "Hobohemia?" Kyle asked. Then, carefully, and with suspicion, he added, "Where?"

Hack looked at him strangely and replied, "Uh. Chicago?"

"What? Why?" Kyle asked. He looked to Stan for answers, his anxiety burgeoning when Stan avoided his eyes. So he grabbed his arm and hissed, "I can't go back to Chicago!"

Stan seemed concerned, at least. He ran his tongue over his lower lip. Then he said, "Well, maybe we could go somewhere else this year."

"What!" Hack exclaimed. "Where the hell else would we go!?"

"I don't know," Stan said. "Pittsburgh?"

"Are you two kidding me with this shit?" Hack said, and that was all it took for Kyle to blow up on him: "Go to fucking Chicago then, Hack!" he shouted. "It's not like you have family there who'd drag you back home if they saw you!"

Hack was visibly taken aback. Kyle braced himself for the anger to be volleyed back at him, but Hack just nodded slowly and said, "So that's it," which was somehow more infuriating than outright hostility. Kyle was fuming now, ready to throw punches.

"They got almost everything in Pittsburgh that they do in Chicago," Stan said quickly. Kyle saw that he was pleading with Hack, that even now, he still wouldn't part ways with him.

Hack stared at Stan, his arms crossed, expression unreadable. Kyle wished he would say no, that they all had to go back to Chicago, in which case Kyle would say he was going to Pittsburgh, alone, and surely – _surely_ – Stan would follow him. But Hack gave in. "Fine. We'll go to Pitsy then."

Kyle wasn't as grateful as he knew he should have been. While he had heard that West Madison Street was a hobo's paradise, the main stem of any large city had to be comparable. Thus, Mole's complaints to Hack on the way to St. Paul seemed so petty, so unnecessary. They were talking quietly, their voices vague but discernible over the sound of the wheels thundering over the rails. Stan was dozing off, slumped against Kyle's side, though not yet snoring.

"I hate Pittsburgh," Mole said.

"Well that's too bad 'cuz that's where we're goin'."

"Why can't me 'n you just go to Chicago."

"You know that's not how it works."

Mole grunted, then asked, "What are we even gonna do there?"

"Same thing we do in the Big Town. Work, drink, get through the winter."

"I ain't workin' in no steel mill."

"There's other job's there." Hack sounded like a tired parent.

"Like what kinda jobs."

"Pickin' lemon drop trees on Big Rock Candy Mountain, whatever the hell you want," Hack muttered.

An unusual silence followed.

"Sorry," Hack eventually said.

If Mole said anything in response, Kyle didn't hear it.

A few moments later, Hack spoke again: "Don't worry. We'll find somethin'."

Kyle would rather they not, actually. He had eighty dollars in his wallet, more than enough for room and board throughout the winter, so why should they have to find some crummy job in the city? He had just worked all summer; he was tired of working.

Stan was snoring now.

Besides, for the first time, he and Stan would be able to live without the constant shuffling of picking up and catching out to the next town. They'd be able to breathe for once. They could work on their relationship (not that it needed mending) and become closer. Then, maybe around the holidays, they could look into finding jobs. If they felt like it.

Maybe, Kyle thought, he could be a floorwalker at Marshall Field's. Stan could work at the newsstand down the street selling newspapers, magazines, cigars, candy. During their breaks they could meet up somewhere discrete, maybe in the alleyway behind the newsstand, in the far back, shielded by a dumpster, his prim blue slacks pulled down to his knees, Stan's breath on his neck, hot and fast, tinged with a hint of black licorice, but unsatiated…

Of course, he was hard now, sporting an erection that threatened to tear the inseam of his pants. Despite this discomfort, he continued to fantasize about those on-the-clock rendezvouses, thinking that maybe if he concentrated hard enough, he'd be able to transfer the scene to Stan's unconscious mind. Then he'd be able to dream of something nice for once.

* * *

The night went on. Kyle was just on the verge of sleep when they arrived in St. Paul. En route to Chicago, he struggled to reclaim that sleepiness. This was difficult, for he was very aware of the fact that once they got there, they'd be on the final leg of the trip to Pittsburgh.

"You okay?" Stan asked.

"What?"

"You seem nervous."

Kyle immediately stopped strumming his fingertips across the floor of the car, unaware that he'd been doing it. "Oh. No. I'm not." He said it casually; he'd been very diligent lately about minimizing his concerns to Stan. While his problems might serve as temporary distractions for him, they would also supplement his anxiety. Stan hadn't said anything too crazy lately about cops and Kyle needed it to stay this way, especially now that they wouldn't be heading to a new town every few weeks. But then again, Hack had said something about Stan doing well over the past winter, when they were in Chicago. Maybe it was just easier to keep a low profile in a big city. Pittsburgh was smaller than Chicago, probably, but it had to be big enough.

Stan fell asleep again, this time on Kyle's thigh. Kyle pet his hair, watching the strip of pale night cut through the darkness of the car, seeing it illuminate his knuckles and highlight the blue-black of Stan's hair. The moon was only a crescent, but its light was bright, the sky cloudless. The geography, bathed in blue, changed slowly but continuously, and the wheels beneath them tore through the distance as fast as always, climbing towards their destination.

For some sleepless hours, Kyle battled with his thoughts ( _"What if I see someone I know?" "Why would you?" "I don't know, but what if I do?"_ ). He didn't remember falling asleep.

Stan woke him up when they arrived in Chicago. It was still night, but barely, dawn threatening to bloom.

They crept through the yard to the PRR freight station, slipping between boxcars, looking beneath them for well-polished shoes, taking advantage of the shadows. This was all second-nature to Kyle now; he couldn't believe that only a few months ago he had strolled through here so carelessly, only barely evading discovery by a road bull. He had left home a seventeen-year-old boy, and in one short summer, became an eighteen-year-old man. He climbed up into the boxcar, feeling in his muscles the whole season's worth of labor. He offered his hand to Stan and pulled him up into the car.

Kyle slept most of the way to Pittsburgh. He woke up unrested, but uninclined to sleep more. Besides, it was light out now, around dawn or a little after. He extracted himself from Stan's body and crawled over to the door. They were traveling parallel to a river. On the opposite side were houses wedged into the hills, clustered into orderly little neighborhoods where stately looking churches and schoolhouses marked the street corners. But as the train moved forward, the buildings became bigger and grayer. Kyle looked as far to the right as he could, and the city itself came into view. Squashed into a V-shape by two rivers, the urban landscape was overrun with thick smog. The skyscrapers seemed to be gasping for breath, struggling to reach higher, beyond the polluted air. Steel bridges reached out from the urban interior like spider limbs, connecting the city to the outside hills.

Farther in the distance, along the right river, tall iron pillars dotted the banks, blasting steady streams of smoke and fire and into the air. It was a nightmarish sight, and Kyle couldn't pull his eyes away. Only when he heard Stan approaching did he back away from the door.

"Kyle? What are you doing?"

Kyle swallowed; his mouth suddenly tasted terrible, like stale cigarettes, or that thick black smoke. "I think we're here," he said, then backed away from the door, feeling lightheaded.

"Oh, good," Stan said. His expression remained neutral as he studied the dark metropolis.

"Why did you want to come here?" Kyle asked.

Stan looked at him. "What do you mean?"

"' _What do I mean?'_ Look at this place!"

"It can't be as bad as it looks," Stan said.

Kyle could have laughed, but he was suddenly furious. "How can it _not_ be as bad as it looks?" he hissed, and though he didn't mean to spit in Stan's face, he wasn't about to apologize for it, either.

Stan's expression hardened, his nostrils flaring. But the voice that broke the silence wasn't Stan's, it was Hack's. "We there yet?" he said, yawning, lumbering over to them sleepily, invasively. "Eesh, they don't call it the Big Smoke for nothin', huh?"

Hack tried to stick his face between them so he could look outside. Kyle, disgusted with Hack's inferior odor and etiquette, muttered a revolted " _Ugh_ " and brusquely shoved his way out of the 'bo-odor pit so he could go stew in the corner.

"Sheesh, what's his problem?" Hack asked Stan.

"I don't have a fucking _problem_ , you _simp_ ," Kyle spat out. He felt a lot better as soon as he said this, and subsequently victorious when Hack didn't make some half-assed attempt to call him on the carpet for his very justified antagonism. Furthermore, Stan, having been quiet for a while now, did not contribute some wisecrack such as, _"See, he says he doesn't have a problem."_ Instead, he maintained his embittered silence, keeping his arms crossed and stare hard, looking at nothing with the utmost of gravity. Kyle ate up Stan's defeat like coconut macaroons, not knowing or caring that his "triumph" was as useless as it would be ephemeral.

The train pulled into the station. After checking to make sure the coast was clear, Hack dragged the door open. The yard was hazy with patches of smog, a dirty early-morning dream world. The poor visibility allowed them to easily exit the yard without being spotted. Once on the street, Kyle took in the city from ground level: people sped by on the sidewalks, automobiles and trolleys zipped down the brick road. Massive buildings, stained with black streaks, hovered over the commotion. But what differentiated it from Chicago, or any other city Kyle had ever been to, was the overwhelming presence of smog, the sheer pervasiveness of filth. You couldn't even see all the way down the street. It was shockingly inescapable.

Stan and Hack were walking ahead, apparently having some sort of stupid secret powwow, both of them callously ignorant to Kyle's anguish. Mole was behind Hack, following him at what looked like an intentional distance (how _polite_ ). Kyle was at the tail end of the procession, feeling chained to the excursion, irritated that Stan and Hack's exclusion of him meant he had zero say in the agenda. Although he knew they were most likely going to some ratty flophouse somewhere, it was nevertheless infuriating to be left out of the loop, and fury mixed with the dirty air made him feel insane, like his brain was melting. His only recourse was to bite his tongue to keep from bursting out with a demanding inquiry of their plans, knowing it would give Stan a huge amount of satisfaction and Hack a huge amount of amusement. Thus, miserable, cranky and hateful, Kyle silently fumed inside his dirty clothes, hating this city, hating Stan, hating Hack, and hating Mole, too, if only because he was present and he was repulsive.

The river was coming into view ahead. Murky and crowded with barges, it was an industrialized Cocytus, more or less. Kyle imagined himself jumping down the bank, into the dirty water, and onto one of the boats lugging coal barges. He could float all the way down the Mississippi that way. But even thinking this was pathetic, so devoid of logic that it resonated with the rationale of children and lunatics, Kyle thought, eyeing Stan.

Two blocks before reaching the riverbank, they turned left onto Second Ave. Shortly thereafter, Hack pointed to a building on the right and said, "There it is." Located on the corner of Second and Smithfield, 405 Second Avenue was a decently maintained residential-style building. Most notably, its façade toted three large signs, one above the front doors and two on either side. They read, "PROVIDENCE MISSION," "GOSPEL MEETING EVERY NIGHT," and "YOU ARE WELCOME". That is, provided you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ Our Savior, or at the very least, are willing pretend you do for the privilege of paying fifteen cents a night for a place to sleep in a tiny room with three other people.

On the way up the steps, Kyle failed to resist the urge grab Stan's arm and to look at him pleadingly for sympathy or reassurance, even if it were only an unconvincing _"It'll be alright."_

Stan just looked at him and said, "What?"

Kyle muttered, "Nothing," through gritted teeth.

Their room was practically a closet, with two rickety bunk beds somehow squeezed inside. Between the beds was a single window, which looked out into an alley and was no bigger than the size of a standard sheet of paper. Other than that, the room was entirely bare; no dresser, no desk, no armoire, no nothing. The gravity of the situation was quickly surmounting catastrophic levels and Kyle felt his sanity and self-control hanging on very delicate threads. He wanted to break down and sob. He wanted to scream. Worse yet, he was apparently the only one who felt this way. Hack was speaking to Mole about some happy-go-lucky idiot nonsense, and in turn, Mole was pitifully gleeful in light of such undivided attention. Stan was rifling through his bag for who-cared-what, evidently unfazed. It was maddening. Did they not think? Did they not care?

"I'm going to take a piss," Kyle announced, making sure to sound as crass as possible. He stomped past Stan and into the hallway, then realized he didn't know where the bathroom was. The door at one end of the hallway was the stairwell, and as he walked to the opposite end, Kyle was certain he would just die if it weren't the bathroom. He wasn't about to go back to their room and ask for help and he _definitely_ wasn't about to hunt down that shady manager and ask _him_ where it was. But the door at the other end of the hallway was indeed the bathroom, thank fucking God.

He hadn't peed in seven or eight hours, and emptying his bladder was a strange experience, almost like becoming a different person. Standing before the toilet with his penis still in his hand, he took a moment to scrutinize the poorly illuminated surfaces of the bathroom, judging them and finding himself disgusted by them.

Then someone knocked on the door. "One second!" Kyle yelped, pulling his pants up. Just before he went to open it, he realized he hadn't flushed. He lunged for the string and meanwhile, the person had the nerve to knock again.

It was Mole. This imbecile.

"Christ, were you about to piss your pants or something?" Kyle hissed, bolstered by irritation on top of torment. Of course, Mole snarled, baring his teeth. Oh, how feral, what an animal, how scary, Kyle thought mockingly, even if perhaps he _was_ a tiny bit scared. Snorting, Kyle brushed past Mole with the explicit intent of egging him on. Maybe he'd come after him. Maybe he'd lunge at him and sink his teeth into his neck and Kyle would bleed out here in the corridor of this miserable Mission House. But, like a dumb dog, Mole bowed down to the superior species and did absolutely nothing in retaliation.

Stan was alone in their room, lying on a top bunk.

"Where's Hack?" Kyle demanded to know.

Stan didn't answer. Kyle just knew he was only pretending to be asleep. So he rammed the poster of the bed, making it shake violently. "Hey!"

Stan immediately bolted upright, then banged his head on the ceiling. He hissed in pain, and the glare he shot Kyle stung like a slap.

" _What?_ " Stan said, practically growling.

Kyle stared at him, ready for a fight. But Stan just shook his head and rolled over, his back to Kyle. As if he had the luxury of washing his hands of this! Boiling over, Kyle tore one of his boots off and chucked it at Stan.

"What the _fuck_ is your fuckin' problem?" Stan barked, shoe in hand. Kyle was afraid he would throw the boot back at him, but Stan just knocked it off his bed. Then, very gravely, very slowly, as if was talking to a poorly behaved child, he said, "Quit havin' a fuckin' temper tantrum and lemme sleep."

A temper tantrum! A temper tantrum! He'd show _him_ what a temper tantrum looked like! He scanned the room for the most breakable thing, then grabbed one of Stan's boots and flung it at the window as hard as he could. Amazingly, it missed by a good six inches, then fell stupidly to the floor.

Stan jerked his head around. "What did you just do?"

"Nothing," Kyle snapped.

The sheer bewilderment in Stan's eyes felt surprisingly shameful and a swift coat of humiliation cooled any traces of anger left in Kyle. He looked down at Stan's abused boot and felt sick. Living in filth had turned him into filth: by now, his self-control had degenerated to the point that he was throwing things with the intent of causing damage. Stan's stare was still boring into him, driven by one presumed but unspoken thought: _"What the hell is wrong with you?"_ Finally defeated, Kyle climbed into the lower bunk as if it were his deathbed.

"I didn't _do_ anything," he said uselessly, cringing upon hearing the pathetic sentence leave his pathetic mouth.

Either Stan didn't hear, or he didn't care.

* * *

Kyle slept like a rock: leadenly unconscious, with no dreams. Centuries later, he awoke to an empty, sunset-bleached room. He didn't know where he was at first, and while this was not an unusual occurrence, the subsequent realization of his whereabouts was uniquely disturbing, for two reasons: one, he was in the wretched city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and two, he was alone. There was no bulge in the thin mattress above him, no familiar presence in arm's reach, no comfort in the eerie late afternoon stillness.

Nor was there a note, of course. Kyle had never experienced this kind of abandonment before, and he was naturally very indignant about it. How dare Stan not leave him a note, or wake him up and tell them they were going, or, hell, even wait around for him to wake up! Any of those options would have been the right thing to do. Instead, apparently, Stan had decided to just up and leave, demonstrating a complete lack of consideration and regard for the most important person in his life.

Essentially, Stan had ditched him in the middle of a desert without even the slightest hint as to the location of the nearest oasis. Then, after Kyle had crossed miles of hostile sands and finally found the damn place, Stan and Hack and Mole would have already been there for ages sipping on coconut milk and dipping their dirty toes in a pool of sparkling water. Feigning innocence, Stan would say, _"Oh, Kyle! Wherever have you been, darling?"_ and then, Kyle would spontaneously combust under the hot desert sun.

But, at the end of the day, Kyle was more or less capable of fending for himself. He was, after all, an adult. He had money in his wallet and he could navigate a city as well as anybody. This is not to say that he was at all inclined to ignore Stan's wrongs – he was still determined to make sure he got what was coming for him. However, there was little point in staying here, stewing and waiting. To do so would be to demonstrate that he was indeed completely dependent on Stan for basic needs, like a child to its mother, which was so profoundly embarrassing that Kyle grabbed his satchel and left the room without entertaining another morbid thought.

It was chilly outside, though it was still technically summer, the Autumnal Equinox hanging like a still pendulum on the following Tuesday. Gusts of cool air tore through Kyle's worn jacket like the warnings of a long winter to come. He didn't have an overcoat. His first thought was to tell Stan that they should find the local Salvation Army. At once, he was repulsed with himself for such an instinct, as it was so telling of his dependency upon Stan. What would be next? Would he need Stan to hand feed him, too? Thusly, a disturbing and graphic image of himself suckling on Stan's teats splayed across his mind, the abject perversity of which had him reeling with horror and kicking an empty glass of Coca-Cola down the sidewalk.

No, he definitely did not need Stan. He had $80 in his wallet and he could – he _would_ – get himself a damn coat. But first, he would get himself something to eat – no, no _dinner_ , he would get himself some _dinner_ at a nice restaurant somewhere, formal attire be damned. Besides, his clothes were mostly clean, just rather worn. Now quite resolute in this plan, the idea of scouting out some crummy café or lunch room was completely out of the question. He had an $80 stake, he was in hell, and for all the wretched days he had toiled under the hot sun, he was damn well entitled to a meal that hadn't been cooked in a jungle pot.

After making a left onto Diamond Street, he soon came across the perfect place: The Royal Restaurant. The building was brilliant in the growing twilight, as if carved from ivory, like a miniature Versailles, out of place in a city like this, but nonetheless very beautiful. Beyond tall glass windows, the dining room looked just as luxurious, in a plush, comforting way: bathed in deep burgundies and gold accents, the dim lighting and the bell-like clang of silverware offered a heavy, dream-like sort of ambience. Its patrons were well-dressed and well-to-do city people, the type of crowd that Kyle had once resented but now rather missed.

Standing up very tall, he marched into the Royal Restaurant, ready to speak in the haughtiest manner necessary to make up for his somewhat shoddy appearance. However, the host's skepticism as he eyed him over was apparent, as if he surmised him some delusional bum with the impudence to walk out on the check at a four-star restaurant. As such, the only thing for Kyle to do was to order an entire bottle of Bordeaux wine. This way, he could articulate his true status not only in his selection of a 1907 bottle of Château Lafite Rothschild wine, but also in his perfect pronunciation of the estate's name, which was likely the best French this dumb waiter had ever heard. If only they knew who he was, who his father was! Appearances were deceiving, didn't they know?

Embittered, he ordered dinner: two lobster cocktails, chicken soufflé, roast leg of lamb with mint sauce, potatoes au gratin and French string beans. By now, he was essentially drunk on a single glass of wine. As such, he neglected to exercise any polite restraint and instead devoured the cocktails and soufflé like a starving vagabond. The lamb arrived shortly thereafter, and it was so good he could have gone on eating it forever. Then for dessert, he somehow had enough room for a serving of chocolate ice cream bon bons. By the end of it all, he was so stuffed he could barely move, but he was nevertheless enormously blotto, having finished the entire bottle of wine.

The bill came to a whopping $4.50, mostly because of the wine, and he tipped a generous 75 cents on top of that, feeling very smug about it. Then, his mouth full of after dinner mints, he stumbled his way to the exit. Just before leaving through the double glass doors, he remembered the second item on his itinerary. So, rather dramatically in his inebriated state, he spun back around and very loudly asked the snobby host, "Say, you got a Marshall Field's department store somewhere in this sorry excuse for a city?"

As if both repulsed and amused by the question, the host raised a sharp black eyebrow and, smirking, he replied, "There's a Kaufmann's at the corner of the Diamond and Smithfield, the first block to your right. But perhaps Boggs & Buhl is more your… _style_."

Having never heard of either of these stores, Kyle was not sure how this was meant to be offensive, but the host's smirking and scoffing left him with no question that it was. However, in his drunken and satiated euphoria, he only found the host's attempt to insult him hilarious. As such, he proclaimed his gratitude to the Royal Restaurant by exclaiming, "Thanks for the help, you miserable son of a bitch!"

It was dark out now, the yellow glow of streetlights and the sharp colors of neon signs illuminating the city. Kyle felt like he was on top of the world, unafraid and unfettered. He found himself back at the intersection of Diamond and Smithfield by pure happenstance, having neglected to keep in mind the host's directions. At the diagonal corner, he noticed the bright display windows of the aforementioned "Kaufmann's." It was a modern colossus of a building, its sheer size suggesting that it housed unquantifiable magnificence, like a gigantic Pandora's box. But there was nothing particularly novel or interesting about the interior, with its low ceilings and unimpressive décor, nothing akin to Marshall Field's open balconies and gorgeous Tiffany ceiling. All in all, Kaufmann's was a standard department store, and that was about it. Kyle took the elevator up to the men's department feeling as if he had been promised cake but given crackers.

Buying new clothes was something he had always enjoyed, from the ritualistic exercise of perusing the styles, colors, and patterns, to the materialistic ecstasy of imagining himself donned in an impressive new outfit. He ended up spending quite a while shopping and was even drunk enough to accept the assistance of a floorwalker, something he never did, but it seemed necessary now, perhaps due to the absence of his usual shopping companion. The floorwalker, a pointy man named George, employed such tactics as, _"We just got this in this week"_ and _"This'll give you a sleek English look,"_ which inevitably contributed to the breadth of Kyle's purchases. In sum, he bought a gray double-breasted Hart Schaffner  & Marx overcoat; a three-piece navy Kuppenheimer lounge suit (the jacket and trousers were navy, the waistcoat was striped tan and orange); a navy necktie to match; a pair of Interwoven socks; and a pair of brown spat boots. Refusing to think about the fact that he just spent forty-eight dollars, he went to the restroom to change into his new clothes.

By the time he left Kaufmann's, it was almost 9 o'clock. There were few people out on the streets now; the city's nocturnal activity was mostly mechanical: trolleys, automobiles, whirring cables, and stoplights' changing colors. It was an uncomfortable, alienating atmosphere and Kyle wanted to go home. But now "home" was the Providence Mission at 405 Second Ave. In light of this inevitable destination, his lingering drunkenness didn't feel nearly potent enough. He needed to be drunker, he thought. He definitely needed at least one more drink. Then he would go back to that horrible place.

It was not difficult to find a bar in Pittsburgh. In fact, Kyle only had to cross the street to reach one. Olmstead's Saloon, located across from Kaufmann's side entrance, was not an upscale establishment by any means, despite its Diamond Street address. It was dim and excessively wooden inside, seemingly unchanged since the seventies, with the exception of the colorful and tacky beer advertisements taped to the walls. Kyle sat down at the bar and ordered a whiskey.

There was a large Coca-Cola mirror on the wall behind the bar, littered with script in chipped paint lauding the "most refreshing drink in the world." As the bartender poured his whiskey, Kyle stared at his reflection in the old mirror, finding himself offended by the falsity it postured as truthfulness, as actuality clouded by filth and obscured behind the broken letters "W-O-R-L-D." Ultimately, however, what mattered most to Kyle was that he looked _good_ , yet this dingy mirror in this dingy bar was trying to tell him otherwise, like some sort of trick. On a broader, generalized scale, he began to wonder if his self-perception was distorted, or perhaps at some point became distorted and that he was in fact wrong about everything real and right about everything unreal. Was insanity contagious…?

These sort of questions eluded him now, so many months since he had stepped foot in a classroom. Yes, that was it – his mind was just underworked, growing bland with inactivity. He downed the whiskey and then asked for another, delaying the inevitable. This one he drank slowly, deliberating abstract doubts and assuring himself that he was still a rational being by virtue of being able to do so. He was drunk as hell, but he was rational. Armed with certainty of his own enlightenment, he paid his tab and left the bar, knowing that it was impossible for the irrationality waiting in the darkness of a tiny room to ever objectively trump him.

* * *

Kyle arrived back at 405 Second Ave. at around 10 o'clock, just as the nightly gospel meeting was finishing up. Rather sloppily, he meandered through the throng of men exiting the building, indifferent to the scoffs of the middle-aged Bible-thumpers. He staggered up the stairs to their room, where Stan was lying on his side in the lower bunk, though not entirely in the dark: there was a red candle on the windowsill, burning tiredly in its holder.

For a few moments, Kyle stood with his back to the door, caught somewhere between actual bemusement and phony bewilderment, between bracing himself and bursting out in laughter.

"Where have you been?" Stan asked. His voice was dry, calm, like dead bark.

Mockingly, Kyle replied, "Where have I been? Where have _I_ been _?_ Where were _you_ is the better question, don't you think?" He leaned up against the bedframe, and Stan jerked his head to stare straight at him. His eye was blue fire, the setting sun on a restless ocean, and it thrilled Kyle immensely.

"What the fuck're you talkin' 'bout?" Stan said. "When?"

Kyle didn't respond, knowing that for each moment he didn't, Stan would get angrier. Besides, what good were explanations, details and facts? What good was anything anymore?

"Kyle!" Stan shouted, and then he got out of bed and stood before him.

Looking up defiantly, Kyle spat out, " _What?_ "

Slowly, Stan made the realization: "You're drunk."

"Yes? So? You part of the temperance movement now?"

"I can't believe you," Stan said. "We had a rule." The incredulous disappointment in his voice was like swallowing castor oil: disgusting, effective, and against Kyle's volition.

"That rule was for _you_ , not me! You're the one who – who did _that!_ " He was shouting now, becoming increasingly more upset.

"Oh, right," Stan said, and it was _just_ sarcastic enough to push Kyle over the edge. With all his strength, he punched Stan square in the shoulder. He barely had a moment to comprehend what he had done when Stan grabbed his wrist, holding it impossibly tight, high up in the air.

Struggling to free himself, Kyle yelled, " _Ow!_ Fuck! Lemme go!"

"Are you gonna hit me again?"

"No! Christ!"

Stan freed him, and then, as if in a haze, walked over to the window. Almost calmly, he got out the pack of ready-mades he'd bought the other day and lit one by the candle. Then he sat down on the unmade bed, holding onto the butt like it was the only certain thing he knew. Kyle was breathing hard, watching the scene unfold and feeling like he wasn't part of it, like he was a member of the audience.

"So," Stan began, exhaling, "you leave without sayin' a word, then come back plastered outta your damn mind and start throwin' punches at me. And _I'm_ the crazy one."

"You _are_ the crazy one," Kyle said airily, but with conviction. "I don't know if there's so much as a single shred of logic in your whole brain, actually!"

"Yeah, Kyle? You're the one who left your rich-ass prissy life in Chicago on a fuckin' whim, thinkin' you were gonna have yourself a fun lil' train-hoppin' adventure. And now _'cuz of you_ , we're here in Shitsburgh, Pennsylvania and you're cryin' 'cuz it ain't good enough for your pretty princess sensibilities. Real fuckin' rational."

That stung, and Kyle naturally flung it back. "Yeah, like it's sooo reasonable thinking that every single cop in the country is after you for a crime you committed _four years ago_ ten fucking states away!"

Stan jumped to his feet and hissed under his breath, "Would you shut your fuckin' trap? What the fuck's gotten into you?!" He seemed legitimately panicked. A small part of Kyle wanted to take it back and apologize. But that part of him wasn't big enough, nor justified enough in light of the hell Stan had served him by bring him here.

"Nothing has gotten 'into me,' _thank you very much_ ," Kyle said, taking a step back. "I've just been thinking about catching out on my own. Considering how enamored you are with Hack, I'm sure you won't even notice I'm gone."

"Oh, yeah right, Kyle. Yeah fucking right, you're gonna catch out on your own."

"Fucking watch me!" Kyle shouted in Stan's face, and with that, he marched out of the room and slammed the door behind him, making the whole hallway shake with the tremendousness of his sudden resolve.

He knew though, that despite the implications of his claim, he would only be catching out to one place.


	8. Chapter 8

Someone was shaking his shoulder. "Hey. Hey. Wake up. We're here."

It wasn't a familiar voice. Kyle cracked his eyes open and saw only darkness. Then the pieces started coming together: he was in a boxcar with the boy and the Negro man he'd met at the station in Pittsburgh.

"You alright?" the boy asked.

"I'm fine," Kyle replied, feeling far from it – his head was pounding, and he was very thirsty.

"Good," he said. "Well, we're gettin' outta here. You know how Corwith is."

Soon, the train inched to a stop, and then one of them opened the door. They crept through the yard, sneaking between the cars and across the tracks until they reached Kedzie.

"He comin' with us?" the Negro man asked the boy.

"I dunno," the boy replied. Then he asked Kyle if he was going to the main stem.

"I don't think so." Then, remembering his manners, he said, "Thank you for your all your help, though."

"Sure," the boy said with a shrug.

Kyle said goodbye and then went down 39th Street. There wasn't anyone around. Four a.m. was a strange time: it was still night, and stars still smattered the sky, but the darkness was fading, the deep drunken black of midnight an old memory the world still clung to as it slept on in ignorance of the portending dawn. In modest residential sections like these, the world was breathing so negligibly as if to be suspended in time, the flapping of a discarded newspaper a rude and bizarre exception. Weighed down by his head, Kyle walked down the street in a haze, feeling like he might disappear.

Eventually, he made it to a park. He trudged through the grass, getting his new shoes wet. Before he even reached the lagoon, he had already decided he would drink from it, because he didn't care. In fact, maybe it would be for the best if he got sick and died from drinking dirty city park water. So, sitting at the water's edge, he gulped down the lagoon water from his cupped hands. Sadly, it tasted fine.

He wondered what day it was. He knew it was September, at least. Everything was still very green, the trees tremendous and turquoise in the dying night. It was a little chilly, though slightly too warm for the overcoat. Was he really going to go back home, after everything? Should he? He had a pretty good idea of what would happen if did, and the thought of it made him nervous. But what else could he do? Go back to Pittsburgh and throw himself back into _that_ mess?

Apparently, even "true" love was meaningless, as so grossly evidenced by the fact that Stan hadn't come after him. Kyle had really expected him to, and the whole way to the station, he kept looking over his shoulder, filled with more fury and disgust each time he didn't see Stan running after him. Maybe Stan really did think he was just a prissy rich brat. Maybe he was even glad to be rid of him.

No: any minute now, Stan would realize how badly he'd messed up, and then he'd be on the next train to Chicago. That was where he'd likely guess Kyle had gone – home to Mommy and Daddy. Damn it.

Whatever. Fuck him.

He still better come though.

Kyle gritted his teeth and chucked a rock into the lagoon. Then he threw another one, and another, until the inoffensive _plonk_ sound they made just irritated him more. You know what? This was all Stan's fault. If he weren't so stupidly attached to Hack, they could've just left Pittsburgh and gone to another city. New York, even! But apparently, Stan would sooner watch him walk away than leave his beloved Hack.

Fuck him.

On poor sleep, anger took its toll on him. He considered napping here in the park, assuming he could find a sufficiently hidden area. But the chance of being arrested for vagrancy really concerned him, being this close to Corwith Yards. He thought of his soft bed, which was now only a trolley ride away, and wanted to cry. He had done and seen so many things the past few months, and it felt profoundly unjust to have to admit defeat now, to have to show up at his front door and say, _"I ran away from home because I was a stupid kid, but I learned my lesson, Mother, and I'm sorry for making you worry, so please forgive me!"_ Ugh! Again, it was Stan's fault, and it irked Kyle that he had no way to articulate that he was the _victim_ here, that he was only coming home because he had no other choice, because the one person he thought he could depend on had proven where his loyalties lay!

He sat there for a long time, hurting, huffing, and agonizing over what to do. He moaned into his hands and tore at his hair. He drank some more lagoon water. He watched the sun climb up from behind the trees, hating its cheery morning light. He thought about Stan and felt crazy; he thought about his mother and felt crazier. He thought, abstractly, about drowning himself in the lagoon or jumping in front of a train, but then he imagined the carnage on the rails – his carnage, his blood – and felt mostly sad. Then, finally, he spat out some curse words and left the park.

Through Route No. 9 would have to do, because he'd be damned if he was going to trudge through the Stock Yards to get to Halsted. But even Ashland proved too close for comfort: the car stop was at the same intersection as the end of Bubbly Creek, where all the blood and waste and entrails from the Yards piled up and pooled into red-black heaps of sludge. And while there was a long dirt "beach" before the creek, the buffer was useless, for the smell was so profound and so overwhelming that Kyle's empty stomach lurched. He brought his overcoat up over his nose and squinted, trying to see if the creek was bubbling like they said it did.

The Stock Yards themselves weren't all that far away. In the distance, beyond the creek, he could see their smokestacks huffing black clouds into the dewy morning sky. Pittsburgh came to mind, and he wondered if he'd really been so stupid as to trade hell with Stan for hell without him. But no, that was absurd: the Union Stock Yards weren't _Chicago_ ; they were merely its double-bound underbelly, too functionally crucial to excise and dismiss, but nevertheless the absolute last thing you'd let a dinner guest catch sight of. Pittsburgh, on the other hand, was itself a smoke-choked sore spot, wherein you could never suddenly find yourself on the shores of a toxic waste dump after having just visited a lovely park, for the whole place was a dump. Thus, out of all of Chicago's great sites and places, it was merely Kyle's personal misfortune that the city's Phlegethon should be the one to welcome him home. Bad luck – that was all it was. Bad luck, again! Oh, how shocking, how unprecedented!

Soon, thank God, the No. 9 was coming up Ashland. He climbed aboard, paid the conductor his fare and got a transfer, then found a seat near the middle of the car. It felt good to sit, and he really wished he were on the No. 8 so he wouldn't have to catch another car. His whole body ached. He folded his arms across his chest and put his head up against the window. Twice he jerked awake in a panic, the slick drone of the wires above having lulled him to sleep.

He got off at the last stop and went down Clybourn Place, heading under the railroad tracks. After going over the drawbridge, it was only a few more blocks to Clybourn Avenue, where he caught the Southport Avenue Line, which he rode to Lincoln Avenue. It had to be well past eight a.m. now; the shops were all open. The pervasive familiarity of his surroundings struck him then, like something important he'd forgotten to do, and he crossed Lincoln thinking of the countless times he'd taken this short walk from his house to the intersection and back, whether to eat lunch or buy candy or run an errand for his mother. Thinking of her, the remaining distance was terrifyingly short, and he began walking as slowly as possible.

By the time he reached Oakdale, he was sweating and shaking, and by the time he was in front of his house, he thought he might faint. He had to lean up against the front gate to try to compose himself, which was nearly impossible with his house looming over him in all its monstrous elegance. God, here he was again. It was astounding, sickening.

Still shaking a little, it took him a few tries to unlock the wrought-iron gate. Then, he walked up the front steps and, refusing to think about it, rang the doorbell, hearing the four-note melody chime from inside the house. Soon, he heard footsteps, and then the maid opened the door.

Upon recognizing him, she gasped and ran up the steps, leaving him there.

Kyle stood there stunned. Then he heard his mother saying, "What's wrong? What is it?!"

"It's Kyle!" the maid exclaimed. "He's home!"

Barely a second later, his mother appeared at the top of the stairs, looking a decade older and thirty pounds lighter. Their eyes locked, and she stood frozen for a moment, her lower lip trembling as she stared at him like he was something impossible. Then, she ran down the steps and cupped his face in her hands, studying him intensely, almost frighteningly, before pulling him into her arms and promptly breaking into sobs.

He hugged her back and started crying, too. She felt disturbingly frail in his arms. "I'm sorry," he said, uselessly, if only to get her to stop sobbing so violently.

It took a while for her to calm down. When she finally did, she looked him straight in the eye and asked him, harshly, "Where on earth have you been?"

"Um, all over the place," he said, "but most recently, Pittsburgh."

She looked at him wildly. "What, Kyle? What?"

"I was, er, working in the wheat fields," he said carefully.

"For three months, Kyle?!" she said, getting loud. "You didn't call, didn't send a postcard, nothing! We've been doing everything to try to find you!" Before he could even begin to respond, she said, "Why did you leave? _How_ could you leave? Do you know how worried I've been thinking I lost you, my only son?" Her eyes were welling up with fresh tears.

He didn't have any good answers; he knew he should've at least sent a postcard. "I'm sorry?" he said.

For some long, painful moments, he was caught under her gaze. "I don't understand," she said, shaking her head and looking at him like he had done something truly terrible. "I just don't understand."

That was exactly it: she didn't understand. She never would, either. And it would only be a fight if he tried to explain himself – that's how it always was. He didn't have it in him right now. "I'm so tired," he said to her.

She frowned, deeply, the kind of frown that said _'I'm disappointed in you'_ but times about a thousand, made all the worse by the hurt in her eyes. He was supposed to feel very guilty and ashamed right now. He was supposed to be very, very sorry. And he was, in a way – he was sorry to see his mother like this; he was sorry for the pain he had caused her. But then, maybe she should've taken the letter he left more seriously. He did say he would be home soon, and although it was sort of a lie back then, it had turned out to be true: he was here now, so what else did she want from him?

After a long time, she asked, "Have you eaten breakfast?"

"No."

"Well, come get something to eat," she said, not very warmly.

While the maid fixed his breakfast, Kyle sat at the kitchen table feeling very much like a criminal as he listened to his mother call his father at the office.

"Central 5017, please," she told the operator. Once connected, she requested Suite 1410. Kyle braced himself.

"It's me," his mother said. "Kyle's home." His father spoke on the other end. "No, he's fine. He's right here," she said, looking at the object of conversation. "Do you want to talk to him?"

Oh, no! Kyle shook his head, but his mother ignored this and motioned with her finger for him to come, letting him know that refusal wasn't an option.

Numbly, he got up and took the earpiece from her. "Hello?"

"Kyle!" his father's voice excitedly rang through the earpiece, leading Kyle to believe that maybe this wouldn't be so bad. But then he turned angry: "Where have you been?"

"Well… all over, really."

"All over _where?_ " his father persisted.

Unwisely, Kyle replied, "The United States of America."

"Don't be smart with me, Kyle," his father warned him in a dangerous voice. "I'm coming home now, and you better have a real answer for me when I get there. Do you understand?"

"Yes," Kyle said, factually: he understood what his father was saying.

His father hung up without saying goodbye.

Kyle hooked the earpiece back up and stared at the wooden telephone, its bells like eyes and its mouthpiece like an agape mouth: a bizarre face gasping at in him shock.

"What did he say?" his mother asked.

"He said he's coming home," he replied, feeling rather outside of all of this.

"Good," his mother said. "Maybe he can have a more productive conversation with you."

Kyle closed his eyes. "I need to sleep. I did not sleep well last night. I have a very bad headache. Please, let me sleep."

"Fine," she eventually said. "But eat your breakfast first." Then she had the maid get aspirin from upstairs.

The lox and cream cheese bagel was good, just how he liked it, with tomato and capers and no lettuce. He wanted another one, but he couldn't be down here when his father came home. So after taking the aspirin, he went to the bathroom and then up to his room, locking the door behind him. Then he got his desk chair and wedged it up under the doorknob, just in case.

His room looked exactly the same as it did when he left. And why wouldn't it? Still, it was uncanny: the curtains were open, letting the sun in; his four-poster bed was made, ready to be slept in; his desk and bookshelves were all orderly, nothing out of place, not a trace of dust in sight. It was as if nothing had happened.

He took off his overcoat and dumped it on the window seat, shut the curtains, and took off his new clothes. Then he put on some clean underwear and pajamas and crawled into bed.

Not long after that, he heard the front door open. He held his breath, afraid that any minute now, his father would come banging on his door. His only hope was that his mother would be able to convince him that he needed rest. While holding out on that, he fell asleep.

Late that afternoon, Kyle, not quite awake yet, reached out for Stan and found only empty sheets.

Oh. Right.

He was home.

He laid there for a long time, hungry and hard. The house was quiet, and he was part of it, barricaded inside his attic bedroom, his desk chair still jutted up against the door. Three months he had not sat in that chair. Three months he had ridden the rails. Three months he had toiled under the sun and fucked under the moon. Three months, that was all. A summer vacation, that was all. A life-changing one, to be sure, but a summer vacation nonetheless.

And here he was again. He was no tramp, no road kid, no hobo, no man. He was a rich boy from Lake View.

It was either essentialism like that, or he had failed.

But if it had failed, it was only because Stan had failed him first. It was Stan's fault he wanted to stay in the cave, shackled by that eye patch, watching Hack's shadows dance on the wall. Oh, sure, the sun was blinding, oh, sure, the truth hurt, and oh, fine, maybe it wasn't entirely Stan's fault; maybe he really did have some kind of psychopathology. But still. Still. _Still!_

Eventually, he dragged himself out of bed.

As he was walking past his parents' room, his mother called out to him. It felt like getting caught.

"Yes?" he said, pushing the door open all the way.

She was lying in bed, her hair down, a book in her lap. "Where are you going?"

"Nowhere."

"Come here."

He went and stood next to the bed.

"Your father's at temple," she said.

"Oh. Why?"

She eyed him. "For Shabbat."

"Oh." He hadn't known it was Friday. "Why aren't you there?" he asked her, and again she eyed him.

"Do you know how special you are to me? How much you matter?"

Maybe not.

"I just wish I understood," she said. "I wish I knew where I went wrong."

He felt inclined to say, _"You didn't do anything wrong,"_ but that wasn't true at all. Instead, he asked, "Is Father angry?"

"He's heartbroken," she said, "as am I."

So this is what he'd be up against, huh? You hurt us, how could you, why did you do it, Kyle? He'd be as voiceless as ever. He sighed, knowing that saying, _"But I said I'd come back,"_ would be useless. So he said, "I didn't do it to hurt you."

"I couldn't tell. And I don't know if it matters in the end." Then she said, "Actions have consequences, Kyle."

Yes, he knew that, but so did hers – theirs, rather: his father was complicit. It was a domino effect; Kyle was not the prime mover. He was also not a child. "Well, what am I supposed to do now?" he asked her. "I can't change what I've done."

"No, you can't," she said with a sigh. "We'll talk about it more after dinner. We're not going to yell at you, Kyle – we just want to understand."

But did they, really? He felt like he'd spent his whole life trying to get them to understand, and they just didn't – they didn't even try. Would they today? It seemed like a gamble.

The first thing his father did when he saw him was hug him for a long time. It made Kyle feel guilty, again, which, throughout dinner, frustrated him, again. But at least he wasn't getting scolded.

They sat in the parlor after dessert, the same as any Friday night, the same old forced togetherness, but this time with an interrogation looming, which was really quite contradictory to the nature of the thing. Ah, but of course: everyone was to be calm, his mother was saying, _calm_ , as if just saying that would make it so.

His parents were sitting next to each other on the sofa, and Kyle was sitting on the love seat, on trial.

"We're glad you came home, Kyle," his father said, "and we're glad you're safe." He went on: "We were very worried about you. We thought we'd never see you again. And we didn't understand why you felt the need to run away. Your letter was vague, so we've spent these past three months trying to figure it out. Can you tell us?"

The answer wasn't complicated, but they would think it was stupid, which is why he hadn't put it in the letter in the first place. Besides, he'd said it all before: _"I don't want to be a lawyer"_ ; _"I don't really even like Adina"_ ; _"I don't want to go to shul"_ : loops and loops of chain that could only be freed by leaving. In the end, he went with complete honesty: "All my life, I've been a pawn on your board. Leaving home was the first real decision I ever made for myself," he explained. "I wanted to be free. I wanted to be my own person for once. Because I am my own person: I have my own thoughts, dreams, likes and dislikes. I'm not your plaything. I'm not just someone to carry your torch."

His father grimaced; his mother looked upset. Then she said, "You can do whatever you want, Kyle. Just, please, never leave like that again."

That was shocking to hear. He didn't believe her.

"But Kyle," his father said, "if you hated it so much here, why _did_ you come back?"

"It's… complicated."

"Well, we're all ears."

"My traveling buddy went to… Mexico," he said. "I told him, don't go to Mexico, that's stupid, you'll get yourself killed down there. But he didn't listen to me. So I was on my own again. And it's not easy finding work in the winter, so I thought maybe I'd come home, for a little while, at least."

His mother gasped.

"Alright," his father said, the lawyer tone creeping in, "can you tell us exactly where you were and what you were doing?"

"What, do you want me to list every single town? I can hardly remember them all!" Kyle said, a bit brazenly.

"Then go by state," his father said.

"Well… I was in Tennessee, then Louisiana and Texas, and then straight up to Canada from there."

"How did you get to all those places?" he asked. "And what were you doing there?"

"Train. And working in the wheat fields. That's all I did all summer," Kyle said. "Then the harvest was over, and we had to find work elsewhere, and so my friend decided to go to Mexico for, uh, gold. Gold mining."

His father heaved a huge sigh. "Well, I suppose we just have to be grateful you didn't follow him!" he said somewhat sarcastically.

"Gerald!" his mother exclaimed, not that what he said was particularly egregious. Then, addressing Kyle, she said, "We _are_ glad you didn't go to Mexico. That would've been a very foolish thing to do. You made the right decision by coming home."

"Did I?" Kyle asked, hypothetically. "I can't tell yet."

"No, you did, you did," his mother said quickly, maybe even desperately.

"I suppose time will tell," Kyle said, which was probably pushing it.

Squinting at him, his father asked, "What things were so bad here for you, specifically?"

"I've told you before."

"Tell us again, please."

Kyle withheld a groan. "Fine. I didn't like being told I have to go to law school. I didn't like all the commentary about Adina. And I didn't like having to go to temple," he said. "My life isn't yours to craft into some ideal. It's mine. So if you won't allow me to live it as I see fit, then I'll have no choice but to catch out again."

His father sat back and sighed. He covered his face with his hands and rubbed his eyes. "Fine, Kyle," he said. "You seem intent on ignoring everything your mother and I have done for you, but if this is how you truly feel, then fine. Fine."

As if she couldn't stand it a moment longer, his mother got up and came over to the loveseat and threw her arms around him. "You can study whatever you want, be a lifelong bachelor, become a Catholic, I don't care!" she exclaimed. Then, demandingly, she added, "But don't you ever run off like that ever again! Promise me, Kyle!"

"Okay."

"Promise me!"

"I promise!"

It wasn't like he had anywhere to go.

* * *

That night, Kyle lay in bed, perfectly awake. All the day's anger, guilt, and frustration had melted down into a lead weight: worthless, gray melancholy.

So he imagined his heart a blue diamond, and he imagined a dagger dropping down from the ceiling and shattering it into a million pieces. He thought this over and over again, holding out for the shattering that would finally make him burst into tears.

Stan only wanted him around when it was convenient.

_smash_

Stan would never leave Hack.

_smash_

Stan hadn't come after him.

_smash_

Stan didn't love him,

_smash_

not really,

_smash_

not enough,

_smash_

not like Kyle loved Stan.

_smash_

But the tears never came.

That weight though – that weight was chained to his ankle. As he sunk down, down, down, he looked up at the sunlight and saw for the first time how the water distorted it, how the ripples so callously wove through the light. Before, he had only seen that it was bright, so bright, the brightest thing he ever felt. Now, as his foot touched the sand, all he could see was the cracks. He would be here forever seeing the cracks, wondering how he could have ever not seen them. He would be here forever, at the bottom of the ocean, lost and forgotten like the Ship of Dreams, grieving over what should have been.

* * *

At lunch the next day, his mother told him that the meeting for entering freshmen was on Tuesday.

He stared at her, suddenly remembering.

Then she said, "Do you want to go to Marshall Field's and get some new school clothes?"

"Didn't the quarter start already?" he asked, beginning to panic.

"Oh no, the first day is Wednesday. You came back just in time!"

Oh my God! Oh my God! "I don't know," he said, faltering. "I don't know if I'm ready yet. I just got back yesterday, and there are so many things I have to think about first."

"What things?"

"Just, you know, things!" he said, but she was still looking at him. "What classes I'm going to take, for one."

"I thought you already figured that out."

"Yes, but that was when I was thinking my continuation group would be history, but now that I'm changing it, I'm going to have to redo my whole schedule."

"I'm sure they'd help you do that at the meeting."

"I don't know if I can go to the meeting! I don't know if I can start college this quarter! I have to think about it!"

She looked taken aback, maybe confused, possibly hurt. It was remarkable, actually – he had fully expected her to be angry and authoritative, telling him he was going to the meeting on Tuesday and that was that.

"Well, let me know if you change your mind," she said, to his further shock. "Would you like to go to shopping anyway? Or we could all go out and do something fun."

"Maybe another day."

"Alright, then," she said, sounding excessively sad about it. She took her tea with her when she left the kitchen.

Later that afternoon, Kyle heard his parents arguing about college. They were loud, and his father was angry, but from up in his room, he couldn't make out much besides a stray word or phrase here and there ( _"can't just"_ ; _"Why isn't he –"_ ; _"this quarter"_ ; _"How can you –"_ ). A little voice inside his head told him he could make this all go away by just going to the meeting on Tuesday. But that wasn't a solution; it was acquiescence, the long pattern of which had led him to leaving in the first place. Bowing down to tyranny would never save you – that was why people came to America, for Pete's sake.

Then a smaller, darker voice inside his head told him that nobody came to America and then _went back_ to Europe, not even when the going got tough here – they stuck it out. But was that out of principle or due to the difficulty of returning? Oh, wait: religious persecution. There was no going back home for them.

But even though this wasn't Russia, and even though the chains here might be loosening a bit, he had still returned to this place where he wasn't free, because… because why?

Because he didn't have anywhere else to go. But he could've gone literally anywhere – he knew how to navigate the world; he knew how to find work and a place to stay. (Right?) So then it was…

…because he couldn't catch out on his own. But he had left in May thinking he'd be on his own. Did his confidence disappear, becoming depleted rather than bolstered by three month's experience? No, it was…

…because he wanted to catch out with Stan and Stan alone. There it was, simple as that: a reasonable request impeded by Stan.

And Kyle was the one suffering for it.

He shut his copy of _Human Body_ and wished his parents would do the same.

* * *

Over pot roast that night, his father asked him in a very friendly voice, "I heard you're changing your continuation group, Kyle."

"You heard right."

"Mind sharing with us what you're changing it to?" his father asked, still with the forced friendliness.

Kyle weighed his options and went with the truth: "Physiology."

His father perked up a little. "You're thinking of studying medicine?"

"Uh. No."

His mother watched his father like a hawk.

"So, do you plan on actually pursuing a degree in physiology?" his father asked.

"I'm not sure yet," he lied. "But physiology is a good foundation regardless – it opens up a lot of avenues in the sciences."

"Well, that's great, Kyle," his father said, sounding sincere yet disappointed.

"You're a very bright and talented young man," his mother added quickly. "You'll be brilliant at whatever you decide to do."

"And whenever I decide to do it," he added, largely to gauge his father's reaction.

He squinted at him. "Is there a reason you can't start school this quarter?" he eventually asked.

"Gerald…"

"It's just a question, Sheila."

"I have to do some research first," Kyle said, "to determine the nature of my work, should I go on to graduate school."

"But that's the whole point of undergraduate," his father told him. "Nobody postpones undergraduate to deliberate what he'll study in grad school – that doesn't make any sense."

"It makes sense when your field of study wasn't offered in prep school and you want to get a better understanding of it."

"Didn't you take biology and anatomy at Everly?"

"I'm not talking about physiology."

"Then what are you pursuing a degree in?"

"I… can't tell you," he said, dropping the ball.

"What? Why not?"

"Please, Gerald, just leave him be," his mother said tiredly.

"I just want to know what he's getting his degree in."

"Well he doesn't want to tell us!"

"But why? Why is it such a secret?"

"I don't know, and I don't care! Just let me have a peaceful dinner!"

His father sighed.

Nobody talked for the rest of dinner, but it wasn't very peaceful.

* * *

While still in bed on Monday morning, his mother came up and asked him, very delicately, if he was sure he wasn't going to the freshmen meeting tomorrow.

"Yes, I'm sure."

"You have to tell them that then."

Kyle groaned. "Can you do it?" he asked her. "Please?"

She frowned. "Is calling the university not something you're able to do, Kyle?"

"No, it's not," he said, curious as to how much he could get away with.

"And what should I tell them when they ask me why you aren't matriculating this quarter?"

"Tell them I have a horrible illness but should recover by January."

She frowned more severely.

"Or don't tell them anything! Say it's private information!"

She made a sound of frustration and threw her hands up. Then she left.

Maybe things really were changing around here.

It seemed like it: later that afternoon, the doorbell rang. A few minutes later, his mother came knocking on his door, which was thankfully locked. "Adina is here to see you," she said. "Why don't you come down and say hello? It would be the polite thing to do, Kyle. She was very worried about you, you know."

Oh, no! No, no, no! "Can't," he said. "Busy."

"Doing what, exactly?" she asked with skeptical fatigue.

"A literary analysis." (Also: crying.)

"That sounds like the sort of thing they do at college," his mother commented. "But I guess you're too sick for that, huh?"

Ooh, sass – and here he thought she was entirely on his side with that. "Yeah, I am," he shot back, unable to come up with anything clever, until: "So I wouldn't want to get her sick, too!"

"She's going to be very upset, Kyle," she said in a low voice.

"Yeah, well, who isn't these days."

She didn't say anything to that. She went back downstairs.

He had won, again.

* * *

There was a lot of time in the day when you weren't working in the fields, riding the rails, or hunting down a flophouse – a lot of time to think, a lot of time for your misery to multiply. Indeed, Kyle's misery had fallen from the red reaches of rage and grown into a fat dark worm that followed him everywhere, demanding he acknowledge it and growing larger each time he did so. His misery was versed in many woes, but it spoke most eloquently and most frequently about Stan Marsh.

Stan who had kissed him; Stan who had abandoned him. Stan who had held him; Stan who had forgotten him. Stan who could well be here in Chicago; Stan who had not contacted him regardless. To be sure: _"You fucker, what's wrong with you, come find me, you bastard,"_ but also: _"How could you, I needed you, I still do, where are you?"_

The hole in his chest was so big that Kyle was sure it would kill him. But then his misery laid claim to the cavern, plugging it up and taking him over. So Kyle became his misery.

He cried, often. He stayed up all night. He thought about suicide. He took too many baths. He told his mother he was fine. He blew up when she pressed him. He received a letter from Adina that he didn't open. He slept a lot. He wished he had never met Stan. He worried he would never see him again. He didn't speak much. He didn't eat much. He didn't go to synagogue. He didn't masturbate. He didn't do that research.

It was Sunday, October 19 – Stan's 19th birthday. Kyle felt abandoned all over again: he was alone at 18, so far from May, the eclipse's return. Detached now, he looked at himself. The conclusion he came to was tired and obvious, greeting him with no surprise. With it, he made himself redress the balance, grumbling as he moved a few blue stones to his side, intrigued and then depressed when the stones turned red.

Whether as atonement or self-flagellation, he submerged himself up to the neck and drank the tea. The bathroom was choked with steam, a towel rolled up against the door for increased effect. The water – so hot, a droplet of Styx, the intolerable marsh – reached the brim of the claw-foot tub, the device for those who oscillated between wrath and sullenness: stewing beneath the water, he fought himself.

This, his own personal Fifth Circle, had to be misery, for he was thriving. The marsh both encapsulated and invaded him: the water swallowed him like a wet mouth, and the tea slid down his throat like hot ejaculate. He was sweating; his heart was pounding; he could barely breathe. It felt appropriate playing out the drama, descending into the earth, becoming agony over misery, all sweat and no thought, broiling brainlessly at the far left of the divided line.

The spectacle fell apart when he, the sole arbitrator, decided to slide his neck over the rim of the tub, going back far enough to see the wall oriented like himself: the stained glass window showed a drooping red chandelier hanging by a green cord. But like its floral norm, the lamp emitted no light: it was dark out, this half of the world turned away from the sun.

He covered his left eye with his hand. Sourly, he remembered something he had refused to before.

In his room, he flipped through the pages, the towel slipping away just as he came to the right passage: _"_ _And suppose once more, that he is reluctantly dragged up a steep and rugged ascent, and held fast until he's forced into the presence of the sun himself, is he not likely to be pained and irritated? When he approaches the light his eyes will be dazzled, and he will not be able to see anything at all of what are now called realities."_

His crime had not been wrath, but vengeance: he had ripped Stan from the cave so he could watch him suffer under the sun and mock him for his ignorance. He had perverted the ascent to the good, twisted the goal of education, warped the virtue of wisdom.

But while he acknowledged this was the injustice he had committed, he did not feel remorse, only a vague sense of self-disgust on top of the constant misery.

Ahh, that was it, wasn't it? Misery – the condition of the tyrant: _"And is there any man in whom you will find more of this sort of misery than in the tyrannical man, who is in a fury of passions and desires?"_

The truth was that he'd been serving time all along.

* * *

"It's three o'clock, Kyle," his mother said in a pathetic voice when he came down for breakfast the next day.

"I can see that."

"Did you just wake up?"

"No," he said, which was true; he had been lying in bed for the past hour.

"When did you wake up?" she pressed.

"I don't know," he said. "Why does it matter?"

"Because I'm worried about you, Kyle!" she said, already getting shrill.

"I'm going to go eat in my room if you're gonna do this again."

Not so discretely, she moved in front of the doorway. "I know something is wrong," she said for the millionth time. "Please, for the love of God, Kyle, just tell me what's wrong! I just want to help you!"

"How many times do I have to tell you nothing's wrong?!"

"Then why are you sleeping all the time? Why won't you leave the house? Why won't you let me call the doctor?"

"Oh my God! I'm not sleeping all the time! I was up late because I couldn't _fall_ asleep!"

"Well that sounds like a good reason to call the doctor!"

Slowly, through gritted teeth, he told her, "Do _not_ call the doctor."

Then she went with: "You might've caught some disease in those wheat fields. Or a tic!"

"No, I didn't."

"But how can you know?"

"Because then I'd be sick! Obviously!"

" _Achhh!"_ she exclaimed, tossing her hands up and then marching out of the kitchen, thank God.

About an hour later, she came up and knocked on his door while he was clipping his toenails. "Kyle?"

"What."

"I'd like for us to go to the conservatory tomorrow."

"No thanks."

"Then I'm calling the doctor."

"What? Why?"

"Because you won't leave the house."

"That's not a pathology, _Mother_ ," he said venomously.

"Don't you talk to me like that," she snapped, characteristically, which shocked him. "If you're not ready to leave at noon tomorrow, I'm calling the doctor."

He threw the nail clippers at the door.

This was exactly why he'd left in the first place, so he didn't have to do shit he didn't want to, like going to the conservatory with his mother. She thought she was _sooo_ clever, threatening him to get him to do things. How dare she. How dare she! Why couldn't she just leave him alone? Why couldn't she just mind her own business? She didn't know anything! All this shit about him being sick, all this nagging and intrusion! How dare she! Maybe he'd call the doctor on _her_ , tell him she's a hysteric who needs to be locked up in an asylum! Then what, huh!?

He stomped around the room, making a lot of noise.

This was all Stan's fault! Fucking Stan! He was so fucking immature! That fucking son of a bitch! Why didn't he just fuck Hack if he needed him so much? Kyle grabbed the paperweight off his desk and threw it at the window. The noise it made was satisfying, but the glass didn't shatter; it remained intact, with long cracks spreading out from the hole the paperweight had made. It looked like a spider web. He approached the window and touched the broken glass with his fingertip.

Then his mother came pounding on the door. "Kyle! What was that noise! It sounded like something broke!"

"It was nothing, Mother!"

"It sounded like something broke!" she repeated, and then began rattling the doorknob.

"Nothing broke!"

"Then what was that sound?"

"I don't know! Maybe it was in your head!"

She stopped rattling the doorknob and said, "Ooh, Kyle. You walk a fine line."

Later, both of his parents came to bombard him, bringing the evidence with them. His father took on that tone of tawdry authority: "Kyle, can you tell us how this paperweight ended up on the side of the house along with little pieces of glass?"

When he didn't answer, his father knocked hard on the door and then rattled the doorknob. "Kyle? You in there?"

"What is it?" he growled.

"How did this paperweight get outside? And why were there little pieces of glass by it?"

With dramatic indignation, he admitted to what these two hooligans already knew: "Probably because I threw it out the window!"

"Why would you do such a thing?" his mother wailed.

He was silent.

"Would you open this door?!" his father demanded.

For some stupid reason, he went to unlock it. They came in and his mother gasped at the broken window, which was ridiculous – what did she expect?

"Why did you do this?" his father demanded, loudly, with disgust. "What's gotten into you?"

"Nothing."

"Look, I don't know what you learned over the summer, but decent people don't throw paperweights through windows."

"Well maybe I'm not a decent person."

"For the love of God, Kyle!" his mother exclaimed. "What's gotten into you?!"

"Nothing's gotten into me!" he yelled.

"Then why _on earth_ did you throw a paperweight out the window?!" she asked.

"I don't know! I just did!"

They stared at him. Then his father said, "You're going to clean up the glass in here, and then you're going to arrange for the window to be replaced. You can't do things like this, Kyle. You have to learn how to control yourself, or you're going to end up in big trouble someday."

"Is that all?"

This really enraged his father: he clenched his jaw, his eyes blazing. But instead of yelling more, he gave the paperweight to Kyle's mother and said, "Here. _You_ deal with him." And then he marched down the stairs.

His mother held the jade paperweight in her hands. She looked at the broken window, then came over and sat on the bed. "You used to tell me everything when you were little, everything that upset you, everything that hurt you," she said. "But then you started doing it less and less, and then somewhere along the line, you stopped entirely. I used to think that was just what happens as little boys get older, they stop sharing things with their mothers, and that it was just something I had to accept." Then she looked at him and said, "But I'm starting to think it was good for you. I think it helped you, being able to talk about your troubles. Because I see you struggling with something now, something you can't tell me, and I think it's killing you, keeping it all bottled up inside you."

Part of him actually agreed. Part of him wished he could tell her: about Stan, about his betrayal, about how much it hurt. Part of him wanted to cry in her lap about it while she stroked his hair and said soothing things.

But what he said was: "I'm sorry about the window."

She looked at the window with a face he couldn't read. "You should come down and get some dinner at some point," she said. "Or when you're hungry. Or whenever."

And with that she left, taking the paperweight with her.

* * *

He didn't bother coming up with a temporary solution for the broken window. Instead, he let the cold night air pool into his room through the eye of the web. Funny: it was a single eye, the eye of a storm, the eye of a tornado: a circle of calm or a lapse of chaos? Or something else? He put his hand through the hole, and the jagged glass scratched his skin. But his hand was outside now, feeling the whisper of night.

He had looked through this panel-less window so often that the glass had vanished from sight: outside was always there, obvious, so real you could reach out and take it – a lie you knew was a lie but always forgot.

Now, the magic trick was over – the hole was the real window, an eye that had been opened.

If it weren't all one long, confused metaphor for Stan, then it was that his mother was right: Kyle had finally popped like a balloon, the paperweight the needle, and this room his rubber skin.

But even then, it always came back to Stan somehow.

* * *

He went to the conservatory willingly the next day, after willingly calling the glass company for the window to be replaced. His mother was thrilled about this, and she was talking animatedly as they walked there (she insisted they walk).

"I joined a brand new club, a 'humanity outlook' club to discuss current events," she said. (Another club?) "There's only been one meeting so far, but it was lovely, just lovely. I think it's really going to take off. We talked about all sorts of things, the income tax, the 17th Amendment, women's suffrage. Everyone was so aware and so _spirited_ – I'm so glad this woman decided to start it up," she rambled on. "Oh! Speaking of current events! Your father and I went to a protest at the Grand Opera House for the Beilis trial on Sunday! There were hundreds of people there – the police even had to be called to keep people from getting trampled. It was truly phenomenal though, seeing all that public outcry. Oh! And Jane Addams was there and gave a speech! I'll have to show you the article from yesterday's paper."

"I didn't realize that was still going on."

"He's on trial right now, actually," she said. "The same old lies are being brought against him to court. It's unconscionable. Can you imagine living in that wretched country?"

"I suppose not."

"If only he had come to America!"

Yeah, well, he hadn't.

The Lincoln Park Conservatory laid ahead, a cluster of plump glass halls beyond the trees, the leaves of which were just beginning to change colors. They went inside and paid and began strolling through the humid rooms.

It had been a few years since Kyle was here, and while it was usually a nice time, today it was painfully dull, one boring plant after another. He drifted through the rooms unable to suspend his disbelief and imagine himself in a tropical jungle. His mother's plant commentary was also very boring, and if he responded at all, it was with something forced and perfunctory, like "nice" or "very nice."

By the end of it, Kyle was eager to scramble back to his dark tower. But as it would happen, his mother neglected to tell him an important detail: "Oh, we're having dinner with your father at Café Brauer. He's going to pick us up here after work."

"You didn't tell me that."

"I didn't? It must have slipped my mind."

That was a lie.

"Oh, come on," she chastised him. "Don't be like that. You _like_ Café Brauer."

The means didn't justify the ends, but he conceded to her scheme anyway – he was getting hungry.

He sat with his mother on a bench in the Great Garden for one long, boring hour, wishing he had just gone home. She went on about the Beilis protest some more, and then the federal income tax (which was "essentially theft"), and then the war in Mexico: "Every day you read about another crazy thing happening down there. That dictator still hasn't stepped down, either," she said. "I'm just _so_ relieved you didn't follow your friend there – the place is a cesspool of violence!" Then she added, "You have to wonder, though, why they can't get it together and function like a normal society."

"Uh, yeah. It's a dangerous place, Mexico," he said. "I suppose he's not very smart."

"Thank goodness you are though! And you're only going to get smarter at college!"

"Yeah…"

His father arrived soon thereafter to pick them up, and then they drove down North Stockton to Café Brauer. It was fine, decent, boring, typical: his parents talked about whatever; Kyle was in his head; no one ordered dessert.

When he got home, it felt like he had been gone for years.

* * *

The window was repaired on Thursday, and then it was as if nothing had ever happened. There was no mark, no scar, just brand new, crystal clear glass. Kyle closed the curtains and tried not to think about it; the ensuing metaphor was poor, its conclusion based on a false premise. The original glass had not been "repaired," but discarded and replaced. Some things truly could not be fixed, and his relationship with Stan was possibly one of them.

Yet whether it was mendable or not, the ball wasn't in Kyle's court anyway – he had no way of getting in touch with Stan, even if he wanted to. That must have occurred to Stan, too, and yet in the past three weeks, he hadn't bothered contacting him, for whatever reason, none of which could be valid, all of which likely boiled down to apathy.

God only knew what Stan was doing right now, probably in this very city. Kyle almost wanted to march down to West Madison Street and ask around for him, but that place was scary, and he would look horribly out of place, and Stan plainly didn't want anything to do with him anyway, so what would it be but an exercise in humiliation? (Maybe he should still try though.)

Yet despite everything, Kyle still worried for Stan. He worried that Hack would continue accommodating the false reality he had bestowed upon Stan, thereby allowing his mental disease to worsen. Kyle was supposed to have been the voice of reason, and while he had overdone it, cruelly, to the point of likely damage, the converse was undeniably worse. Oh, if only he had known more before he left! If only he had read more than Havelock Ellis and _Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex!_

That was in fact what he was supposed to be doing now, as he had so professed at dinner some time ago. It hadn't been a lie – he really did plan to go to the library at some point and get started, it was just that it was so much easier _not_ going to the library.

It was easier not doing anything.

And so he began sliding over into negation. Black sand proliferated on the hardwood floor. He remained in his benighted tower, an inversion of Mount Olympus: no western waters, no earthen core, no fields of torment, no meadows of white. Here, up high, the dark desert grew with the gray sky, burgeoning in breadth and waxing in weight. Pursuing totality, its listless reach ate everything, facing no opposition as it extended far and wide, farther and wider. It was everywhere, everything: waking, breathing, here, there; it was nowhere, nothing: -, -, -, -…

It was also very empty.

Sometimes he walked around, looking for something, anything: a town, a person, a snake, a bone, a rock. But mostly he stayed put, remaining in one unspecified spot and looking out at the gray horizon, knowing that it went on forever, that this was all he was, and that maybe it would kill him.

Stationary, he began to find himself partially submerged in the black sand. He would extract himself, usually, sometimes, occasionally, infrequently, rarely, never. The sand came up to his navel, chest, neck, mouth, and then, just as it approached his nostrils —

Something sharp dug into his left thigh. The pain was so irritating that he scrambled out of the coffin with fervor, bringing the imbedded source with him. He yanked it out: a small piece of a mirror, a right triangle. Upon it he saw the theorem; through it he saw his eye, in it he saw a white dot in the sky, but when he looked up, it wasn't there.

Over time, the dot in the mirror grew larger, until one day, it was most certainly a moon, and it was most certainly sinking. Kyle hoped it would crush him, but it did not; instead, it grazed the black dunes and sat there obtrusively, massively. Out of necessity, he walked away, the shard of mirror ever clutched in his hand. He became drunker as he trudged forward, through turkey, stuffing, beans, potatoes. The rabbit on the mantle was judging him for the refills: _"We had a rule."_ Bash the thing to pieces, slice its porcelain head off – violence, violence – he would never, of course, and yet… he had. But the rabbit – the harmonious scale: the nurturer, the murderer – took the cake: apple, it was, unremarkably.

Far away to the desert, a street corner rose out from the sand. There he stood, in the cold and dark, beneath the moon gone and new. The triangle mirror rested in the pocket of his overcoat now, a silver circle in its perspiring place.

This was not like the first time – this time, he was after something he had known. He, red, sprinted down Halsted; he, fox, sought the black rabbit's den.

The den was dingy, dirty, high, alive, full of two-eyed faces, of brothers and brothels, of spirits and spirits. Anxious, he looked and looked and spoke to no one; his species muted, his search was his own. He peered into every nook, upon each face at every corner, and then finally at the black, black sky, under which he stood on the gray, gray concrete: inversion, inversion, inversion. Best not to find him, perhaps, better to suffer for what he was and what he had known. The black sands consoled him, drying his tears before they could form.

The walk back to the moon took two hours. It grew larger as he got closer, like it had before. Then, when he was nearly there, the mirror flew from his hand, cutting his skin, and soared to the moon. Upon the white sphere, the triangle drew an outline of itself in blue ink, its longer leg parallel to the sand. Then the interior faded to black, and _b_ bled all the way down to the sand, forming an impossible doorway.

Trailing blood on the sand, he walked the rest of the way to the moon and went inside it. A spiral staircase was in the center, its banister illuminated by blue flames, which began to pulse as he climbed the stairs. At the top of the stairwell was a platform, where a bearded man in white robes sat at a desk.

"My friend!" he exclaimed when he saw Kyle. "What happened?"

"I lost my lover. I went to search for him but couldn't find him."

"How did you lose him?"

"We had a fight. In my anger, I left. I thought he would come find me, but he hasn't, and now I may never see him again." Kyle began to cry.

The man got up and put his hand on his shoulder. "Do you love him?"

"Yes."

"Then that explains this place."

"I hate this place."

"You grieve for the wisdom you shared with him," the man said. "But remember, love never stays dead."

"I may die myself before it comes back to life."

The man looked at him with great sadness and said, "That may lead to two corpses."

And as the man and the moon and the stairwell disappeared, that was what had been written, that Achilles had joined Patroclus in death.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The quoted passages Kyle reads after the bath scene are from Plato's _The Republic_ translated by Benjamin Jowett.


	9. Chapter 9

"I'm not letting you wither away like this," his mother told him. "I'm calling Dr. Barryte."

He glared at her. "You'll be wasting his time."

"Then so be it," she said, conclusively.

She didn't close the door after her.

It was ten thirty in the morning – way too fucking early. He rolled over, stuffed his face into the pillow, and imagined himself beating his mother to the phone and smashing it to pieces. It would be like the window incident all over again, except a hundred times worse.

There was something wrong with her, something seriously wrong with her. How did his father tolerate such a woman? She was so adamant, so boisterous – aggressive, even. It was her way or no way.

God, what a bitch.

Even though he was exhausted, having only fallen asleep around seven a.m., he wasn't able to fall back asleep. At one point, he heard the doorbell ring. He spent the next half-hour in grim await.

Then there was a knock on his door. "Kyle? Are you awake?" Dr. Barryte asked.

He rolled over and saw their old family doctor, feeling ashamed to be seen in this sorry state, still in his pajamas and everything. "Hello," he mumbled, forcing himself to sit upright.

Dr. Barryte pulled the desk chair over to the bed. "I'm glad you came home, Kyle," he said after sitting down. "I heard you haven't been doing well since, though."

"I'm not sick," Kyle contended. "I don't know what she told you, but I don't feel ill – I truly don't. I just –"

Dr. Barryte looked at him.

"I'm just having a hard time getting readjusted, I suppose," Kyle said.

"I heard you were all over the country working in the wheat fields," Dr. Barryte said. "Did you enjoy it?"

"Yes."

"It must be strange being home again."

"That's one to put it."

"Are you looking forward to starting college?"

"I don't know," he said. "I guess."

"Alright," Dr. Barryte said. "Let's take a look, shall we?" He stood up and turned away.

Kyle got undressed, hating this, hating it always.

"So what have you been up to lately?" Dr. Barryte asked him while he was examining him.

"Uh, not much."

Afterward, Dr. Barryte asked him, "Have you ever developed a drug habit? Or an alcohol problem?"

"No. Why?"

"I believe you're suffering from a bout of periodic melancholia, most likely brought on by coming home," he said. "Now, this may come as a surprise to you, but one of the most useful drugs for treating melancholia is cocaine. I know, I know: the drug has garnered a terrible reputation as of late. But when administered appropriately, its usefulness is indisputable. I've cured two patients of melancholia using a very low dose of cocaine, and none of them went on to develop a habit." He went on: "I'm going to have you take a fourth of a grain every day for seven days. If you aren't sane again after a week, give me a call and I can write you another few days' worth, but that'll be it."

"Alright," Kyle said, shocked that their trusted doctor of eighteen years was prescribing him cocaine but hardly opposed to it.

Dr. Barryte handed him the prescription. "You can either mix the powder in a drink or get a rubber tube from the druggist and sniff it."

"Okay, great," Kyle said.

"You'll feel better soon," Dr. Barryte said with a smile.

Not long after the doctor had gone downstairs, Kyle heard his mother's booming _"What, what, what?!"_ reverberate through the house. He got out of bed and crept down to the second floor to eavesdrop – this was going to be hilarious.

Dr. Barryte was speaking: "I know what you've read in the newspapers and magazines, and I know you've heard everything Hull House has to say. But I urge you not to be so swayed by sensationalism that you forget the drug has actual medical use."

"And what if he ends up developing the habit?" his mother asked, angry.

"Relax," Dr. Barryte said calmly. "He's not going to develop the habit. First of all, I'm prescribing him a very small amount. Second, your son is an intelligent young man with a strong nervous system and no propensity towards vice – he's the perfect candidate for this treatment. It should completely cure him of his melancholy."

"Isn't there anything else you could give him?"

"I think opium would do him more harm than good."

"Oh, God," his mother moaned.

"Listen, I would not in good conscious prescribe him cocaine if I didn't believe it would cure him, or if I thought he would develop the habit," Dr. Barryte said, probably losing his patience. "Please, Sheila, forget the newspaper stories for a minute and consider what's best for your son."

"I always consider what's best him."

"I know you do," Dr. Barryte said more kindly. "You're a good mother, that's why."

Then Dr. Barryte said goodbye, and Kyle quickly crept back to his room.

His mother came up shortly thereafter, looking deliciously bitter. "Where's that prescription?" she said, proceeding to snatch it off the nightstand the moment she saw it. Her eyes bugged out as they darted across the paper, and Kyle struggled to stifle his laughter. It was beautiful how this had all backfired on her, just beautiful.

She suddenly looked at him, sporting an impressive frown. Then she left.

"Hey! Where're you going with that!?" Kyle called out.

She halted in the doorway and looked over her shoulder at him. Then in a strange, even tone, she said, "I'll go to the drug store after I do something. Stay in your room."

"What? Why?"

"Because I have to make a phone call, dammit, Kyle!" she retorted with such suddenness that it legitimately frightened him. But before he could respond, she had marched downstairs.

Jeez Louise, somebody was a nut.

He didn't bother going down to eavesdrop. She was probably calling his father, who would likely respond in a similar fashion. All Kyle knew was that they better not stand in the way of his legitimate medical treatment. He was actually eager to try cocaine again, despite what had happened last time. He had probably just taken too much. But now he was taking it under a doctor's supervision, so nothing could go wrong. It might even help with his so called "melancholy," which was in reality a broken heart: a tragic condition, to be sure, but hardly a psychopathology.

Now he was getting hungry, but he didn't go downstairs lest his mother go nuts on him. He debated taking a bath, since he hadn't washed his hair in a while, but he was tired, so he just went back to bed.

Later, his mother stomped into his room. "Here. Take this." She was standing next to his bed holding a glass of water in one hand and a little white box in the other.

"What's that?"

"Your medicine," she said, tight-lipped.

"That can't be seven doses."

"It's one dose," she said. "I'll give you the next one tomorrow."

He looked at her. "So you're going to hide it from me? Wow. _Wow._ And somehow you were surprised I ran away."

In a tight staccato, she said, "Are you going to take it or not?"

He looked at the glass of water. "Didn't you get a rubber tube?"

"You're not doing that."

"What? Why not? He said I could!"

"I don't care," she said. "You're not doing that."

"Why not?!"

"Because that's what coke fiends do," she practically growled.

Then he remembered something. "Fine. Put it on the nightstand," he told her, gesturing with his hand.

"No. Take it now." She shoved the box and glass of water in his face.

"Just leave it on the nightstand!" he shouted. "Stop trying to control every little thing I do! I'm eighteen years old, for God's sake!"

She clenched her jaw and put the box and glass down on the nightstand, causing some of the water to splash over the rim. Then she stomped back out, closing the door forcibly behind her, but not so hard that it slammed.

Honestly, what a nut.

He was just grateful she left, even more so that she hadn't mixed the cocaine in with the water. That was very lucky. Maybe she thought he was supposed to eat it and wash it down with water. Ha, ha! What an idiot. He got out of bed and retrieved his wallet, taking out a one dollar bill and carefully rolling it up.

This was going to be great.

He went over to his nightstand and opened the little white box, his enthusiasm instantly dampening. What the hell? There was hardly anything in here! This wasn't fair! Yes, Dr. Barryte had said "a low dose," but this was practically nothing!

Still, it smelled wonderful: clean, fresh, vibrant, like perfume or cleaning solvent, like Texas, like freedom.

So he stuck the end of the dollar bill in his nostril and sniffed it all up.

Then the box was empty. Disappointed, he sat down on his bed, desperately wishing for more, which was probably a bad sign. While he knew this small amount was therapeutically appropriate, it nevertheless seemed very cruel, like receiving a little crumb of cake and being expected to be satisfied with it.

But maybe that was how coke fiends thought. Maybe he just needed to have some patience this time.

So he lay back on the bed, his feet on the floor, and waited. Soon enough, his blood started pumping a little faster, and everything began to seem pretty damn good. It wasn't quite the Mount Olympus-level ecstasy of the first time, but it was still good, very good, as if a dollop of sunshine had been plopped into his skull, glee soaking him all the way down to his toes. He was very awake now and no longer hungry.

He was also increasingly hard.

Panting a little, he scrambled over to lock his door and then shut the curtains, too, suddenly very excited. Then he got the little key from inside the book cover of his dictionary and opened his desk compartment where he kept his collection of menswear advertisements.

God, it was all so good: men touching each other (an arm on the back!); men in bathing suits (his legs!); men in their underwear (the outline of his dick!). But the very best, the really good stuff, was kept at the bottom of the pile: the sock advertisements. And the best of those, the absolute cream of the crop, was a lucky find from the _Saturday Evening Post_ two years ago: an Interwoven sock ad with a guy in his underwear. The man was in a locker room, his foot up on a bench as he leaned over to run his fingers over the black fabric of the sock. And the garters on his calves, oh my God, those garters!

His mouth dry, he took the ad and scurried over to his bed. Then he pulled down his pajama pants and grabbed his cock with his right hand, using his left to hold the magazine ad.

Oh, those garters!

The guy in the ad would look up at him and smirk, and then he'd come over to Kyle and ask him, huskily, if he'd been watching him, but Kyle would be speechless, and so the man would slide his hand between Kyle's legs and say, _"I thought so,"_ and then the man would unzip Kyle's pants and start touching him while he kissed his neck and licked his jaw, and Kyle would moan and moan and moan, and the man would chastise him saying someone might hear, so he'd try really, really hard to be quiet, even though, oh my God, it was so much, so good, oh, and then – oh my God! – the man was fucking him, right there on that locker room bench, and his dick was so huge, going in and out of him so fast, and the man was grunting and huffing, and it was so intense, so erotic, so delicious, and Kyle never ever wanted it to end; he wanted to be fucked like this forever and ever —

He came, long and hard, his brain flooding with liquid Nirvana.

He lay there for a while afterwards, breathing hard, the ejaculate cooling on his hand. Then he looked at the sock advertisement with the usual slight disgust, this time overlaid with the awareness that he had known something true and real and not fetichistic. Ah, well, what could you do? Stan was a rotten tramp bastard, but Interwoven sock man would never leave him.

Still feeling quite good, he got cleaned up and went downstairs. His mother was sitting at the kitchen table, absorbed in the papers spread out before her.

"Oh, there you are," she said. Then, with suspicion, she asked, "How are you feeling?"

"Very well, thank you. And yourself? I came down to get something to drink."

"Not something to eat?"

"I'm not hungry," he said, to which she did not respond. He poured himself a glass of orange juice and then sat down at the kitchen table.

"What are you doing?" he asked her. "What's all this?"

"These are the recipes for the Anshe Emet cookbook. I'm trying to figure out whether I should sort them by type of food or by meal," she said. "The problem is we got six beef recipes but only one dessert recipe, and I don't want the sections to be uneven…"

"That's wonderful, Mother. Did you know that I'm changing my continuation group to physiology? Did I tell you that? Well, anyway, the reason I made it physiology is because I'm planning to earn my degree in psychology! Psychology is the study of the science of the mind. Some people wrongly believe it's a brand new field, but that's not true at all; it actually diverged from philosophy about, ooh, forty years ago? Even the Ancient Greeks were studying psychology! It's still a very up and coming field, though, by which I mean there's lots of intellectual enthusiasm going on, lots of fascinating research being done, lots of theories being made. Much of it's coming out of Germany, so I'm going to make German my modern language selection – that's what the description for this one Senior College psychology course says, that you should be able to read German. Isn't that great, Mother? Isn't it great that I can incorporate my field of study with my heritage?"

His mother pepped up: "Oh! That makes me so happy to hear! I could help you practice, too! I never thought I'd come to miss it so much. You know I used to have dreams in German when I was younger?"

"I suppose that's a sign of fluency," he commented. "But speaking of dreams! Have you heard of Sigmund Freud? He's responsible for developing psychoanalysis, which is about unearthing a person's unconsciousness and deciphering dreams, that sort of thing. The trouble is his work is all in German! Well, some of it's been translated into English, but not all of it, and that takes a while anyway, so I have to learn German. Maybe one day I could work at the laboratory in Leipzig! I could be a brilliant bilingual psychologist, publishing things in both English and German, that way everyone could understand exactly what I mean! Oh my God! I can't believe I didn't think of this sooner!"

"That sounds like a good idea," she said, then asked, "What would you study as a psychologist?"

Sex, insanity. "Oh, all sorts of things! The great thing about psychology is that it's _science_ ; it's about finding the truth behind people's thoughts and behavior and picking apart the complicated machinery of the human mind. To be frank, though, I'm no expert in it – they didn't have psychology at Everly, which is such a shame; it really ought to be required high school curriculum, if you ask me. So, anyway, I've only read two rather niche books on topic – there just aren't that many good ones at the regular library, let alone anything recent, which is why I was going to go to the university library, but you know how the past few weeks have been. It's just, you know, hard for me, being back here, and I've been worried about my friend, too. For all I know, he could be dead now, drawn-and-quartered by Mexicans."

"Oh. So you've been worried about your friend?"

"You would be too if your friend ran off to Mexico!" he shot back, maybe excessively.

"Yes, I suppose I would be," she said. "What's your friend's name, anyway?"

"Uhh. Swarm."

"What?"

"That's not his _real_ name, obviously. Everyone on the road has a nickname, Mother. It's like being part of a secret club; you don't go around broadcasting people's real names."

"So do you have a nickname?"

"Yes! Handle. Because I have such a great handle on things."

"So there's a reason behind these nicknames?"

"Yes, usually."

"Then what's 'Swarm' for?"

"Oh." Somehow, he had never considered this. With some humiliation, he admitted, "I'm not sure. Maybe it's because it's a bit like his first name."

"What's his first name?"

"I can't tell you!"

"Why not?"

"Because it's a secret!" he hissed.

"Oh, right," she said. "So what did you say he went to Mexico for again?"

"To work in the gold mines. Mexican gold is very valuable, you know. It was used to build the Aztec empire. That's what they called the capital, 'the city of gold.'"

"Wasn't that a long time ago though?"

Scoffing, he said, "Well, yes, but if you read the paper, you'd know that a bunch of ancient gold mines were recently discovered in the Texcoco Mountains!"

"I read the paper every day, Kyle," she said flatly. "That's why I know how dangerous it is down there. It's no game of cowboys and Indians – it's radicals killing people left and right. I just hope you understand that."

"I know that!" he retorted, offended. "I told you I told him not to go!"

"Okay, good."

That was when Kyle realized he was starting to come down. "You know, Mother," he began, staring into the half-empty glass of juice, "I think it would be a good idea for you to start thinking of me as an adult. I'm eighteen now, and this business of hiding my medicine is very patronizing."

She looked at him with a drab expression. "You're not an adult."

"I am according to Jewish law."

Sarcastically, she asked, "Oh, do you care about that?"

He glowered at her. "This is going to deter my psychological development."

"I doubt it."

"How would you know? You're not a psychologist."

She laughed and said, "Neither are you."

"I know more about it than you."

"Two books' worth," she said in an infuriatingly snotty voice.

Darkly, he said, "I told you I have to go to the library."

"So why don't you do that?"

"Because I've been… busy."

"Oh, okay."

Grrr. "I would appreciate having access to my medicine, Mother," he said sternly.

"I'm not giving you that cocaine."

"Why not!?"

"Because."

"Because why?"

"You know why."

"I can't for the life of me understand why a well-adjusted mother would horde her son's medicine."

"Then you can ask your father for an explanation when he comes home," she said. "I'm busy right now. Leave me alone." She went back to the recipes.

He thought about accidentally spilling his orange juice on the table but decided against it. Instead, he spat out, "Fine," and then stomped out of the kitchen.

He had to get ahold of that cocaine somehow, he thought, lying in bed again and wishing he were dead. While this wasn't as catastrophic as the first time, it was significantly worse than his usual misery: he felt gray, tired, and bored: a dull and steady gloom like an overcast sky. Last time, he had had Stan to take care of him afterward. It made him cringe remembering that Stan had given him a sponge bath, and then it made him fume realizing that Stan had probably construed that event as his having been right all along. Kyle remembered all his bitching about it: _"Coke is bad, wah, wah," "Don't do cocaine, Kyle, wah, wah, wah."_ God, go join the Church of Jesus Christ and Latter Day Saints, Swarm.

Oh, shit, that's right – he told his mother about Stan! Shit! That was really fucking stupid! And oh, shit! He told her about psychology, too! Oh, God, why the fuck did he do that!? She was going to tell his father, and his father would be all, _"Kyle, what's this I hear about you wanting to study psychology? Don't you think you should study something more practical?"_ Ughhhh! Why had he said all that stupid shit!? Damn it, damn it, damn it! Fuck, he was so fucking stupid!

New rule: don't talk to parents while high on coke.

Maybe he fell asleep at some point; he didn't know; he just knew that his parents were now in his room and it was awful and they needed to leave.

"It's time to eat," his father said.

He buried his face in the pillow and said, "I'll come down later."

"You haven't eaten anything all day," his mother said.

He groaned loudly. "Leave me alone! I'll eat later!"

His father said, "So you were all peppy for a half hour this afternoon and now you can't even get out of bed to eat dinner?"

"It takes a while to work, okay," he said. "Stop giving me such a hard time about it and call Dr. Barryte if you're so concerned."

"You have to eat something," his mother said. "I'll even bring you up a plate of food if you promise me you'll _eat it_."

"Alright, fine."

"Sheila –"

She ignored him. They both left, and then his mother brought him a tray of with a bowl of stew, which he did eat, feeling pathetic about it.

He _was_ pathetic, wasn't he? Wasting away in his bedroom, crying over his "friend," masturbating to socks, doing coke again.

He couldn't even remember the last time he washed his hair.

* * *

As usual, Kyle struggled throughout the week, now with the added burden of resisting a growing stash of cocaine. He knew it would be a terrible idea to do so much coke at once, but it was also a great idea: this way, he could get the most out of it, rather than tolerating seven days' worth of mediocre ups and downs. Nothing about that seemed therapeutic, anyway, which meant that his mother had probably been right, as excruciating as that was to admit. It was important to note, however, that she was right for the wrong reason: moral outrage à la _Ladies' Home Journal_. Kyle's reasoning, on the other hand, was based in actual experience with the drug: he knew how coke worked and how it made you want to keep doing more of it. He also knew how great it made you feel – happier than you could ever hope to feel naturally.

For now, he continued to be miserable. His mother was skeptical and antsy, occasionally saying things like, _"It's not even working!"_ and _"Maybe we should get a second opinion,"_ and the usual _"Why don't we go (select one: shopping downtown, on a walk, to see_ Henry IV _at the Blackstone Theatre)?"_ While he could've pretended to be happy and energetic, at least to get her off his back, it would've required a tremendous amount of effort he just didn't care to expend. So instead, he would respond with things like, _"No, it's working a little bit"_ and _"Would you just relax?"_ and the usual _"Leave me alone!"_

Currently, he was in the tub for the second time today, having gone back to bathing as a way to kill time. Resting his head on the rim of the tub, he thought back to that bathroom in New Orleans, where Stan had first kissed him. It hurt so much, remembering how beautiful and perfect the summer had been. How could it all be over? How could it have been so fleeting? Life was cruel; living was agony. He was going to die without love, without Stan, not that Stan loved him anyway. It didn't matter what Socrates said about love's inevitable rebirth; Kyle didn't want love if it wasn't with Stan.

He was never going to recover from this, and he would hate himself for it if he did, because this was not something a person should recover from. This was the ultimate pain: sharing wisdom with someone only to have it ripped away from you, and then being a fucking invert to boot, because that always made things easier.

God, he could kill him! Where the hell _was_ he? And what the hell was he _doing?_ If he was getting sloshed at some West Madison Street saloon right now…

Hmm…

Later, his mother came up to his room and said in a friendly tone, "Why don't you come to temple with us tonight?"

"No thanks."

"I think it would be good for you to get out of the house a little bit."

"If I leave the house, it's not going to be to go to temple."

"I don't know if there's anything that _would_ get you to leave the house!"

He groaned and said, "Fine, we can go shopping next week."

This worked instantly: she pressed her hands together and said, "How about Monday?"

"Fine."

Little did she know he _was_ leaving the house tonight.

* * *

Leaving a note was like déjà vu, especially since it included a lie again: _"Gone to university library. Be back by midnight, probably sooner."_

Even though the sun had set, it was surprisingly warm out, maybe fifty degrees, so he went back inside and exchanged his overcoat for a jacket. Then he walked over to Halsted to catch the No. 8. During the forty-five minute trolley ride, he tried to come up with a plan. He was definitely going to ask around this time. Maybe he could also inquire at the front desk at some lodging houses. Yeah, that sounded like a good idea.

He got off at Madison and walked two blocks down the street, into the very heart of hobo-land. On this warm December evening, the main stem was as booming as ever: hobos were everywhere, their voices ricocheting through the air; the buildings – saloons, lodging houses, shops – vibrating with activity; the possibility of hobohemia crackling with abandon.

The entranceway of a closed employment agency looked like the perfect place to do it. He went over and huddled up in the entranceway's corner, his back to the street. Quickly and carefully, he took the white box and pre-rolled dollar bill out of his pocket, tightened the bill, then shoved it in his nostril and meticulously snorted the white powder. Then, he shoved everything back into his pocket and flipped around, checking to be sure nobody saw him.

Well, that took care of that! Now the real mission could begin.

He went into the saloon next door and walked up to a couple hobos sitting at a table. "Have any of you seen a hobo with an eye patch around here?"

All three of them just stared at him, so he said, "Well have you?"

"And who're you?" the man in the hat asked, eyeing him up and down. "Some kinda rookie fly dick?"

"What?"

"A cop. You a cop?"

Kyle was flabbergasted. "I'm not a cop! I'm just trying to find my friend!"

"Yeah, sure, and I'm the President of the United States," another said, which made them all burst out laughing.

"I'm telling the truth! I caught out with him this summer!" Kyle protested.

The man in the hat said, "Don't be thinkin' you can walk around here askin' questions. No 'bo worth his salt would sell out one of his own, and you'd know that if you really caught out with this friend of yours."

"Well I guess I forgot about that!" Kyle said with a huff before storming out of the saloon, horribly embarrassed. Fuck those guys! Didn't anybody ever teach them not to judge a book by its cover?

Regardless, he took off his jacket and carried it, hoping that would help. He also undid some of his shirt buttons (he was sweating anyway). Maybe he should've thought this through a little better, but no worries! When at first you don't succeed, try, try again! And try again he would!

Then as he was walking down the street, something very lucky happened: he saw someone he recognized! He was standing outside an inn, smoking a cigarette. It was the boy he left Pittsburgh with!

Kyle crossed the street and called out to him: "Hey!"

This startled the boy so much he nearly dropped his cigarette. "Jesus," he said. Then he looked at Kyle and said, "Oh, hey. The kid from Pittsburgh."

"Yeah! It's me!" Kyle said, absolutely delighted. "I'm so glad I ran into you!"

The boy looked at him. "Um… Why?"

"Because I know you, so I can ask you if you've seen my friend without you accusing me of being a cop. Because I'm not a cop. I mean, look at me, do I look like a cop to you?"

Peering at him, the boy asked, "Are you alright?"

"Oh, I'm great! I just sniffed some coke, after all. How about you?"

"Fine," the boy said. "So did you need something from me or what?"

"Oh, right! Thanks! I almost forgot!" Kyle said, laughing. "I wanted to ask you if you've seen a guy around here with an eye patch. He's about my age, with hair a lot like yours, actually – same color, even – and he's got the most handsome face. He goes by the name Swarm."

"Come to think of it," the boy said, "I have seen a guy like that around."

"You have?" Kyle said, inching closer. "Oh my God, I knew it! I knew it! Ha, ha, ha!" Then he asked, "Where did you see him? And when? And where's he staying? Do you know?"

"I didn't see him anywhere particular. Just around," the boy said. "I haven't seen him in a while."

"Oh," Kyle said, deflating. "But you're sure it was him? And what's 'a while'? Days, weeks, months?"

"Oh, I don't know. Three weeks, maybe a month?"

"And you're sure it was him?" Kyle repeated.

"Well, yeah," the boy said, "unless there's another guy like that around here."

Kyle moved his hand over his chin. "Do you think if I went in and asked at any of these lodging houses, they'd tell me if he was staying there?"

"I dunno," the boy said. "Maybe."

Kyle sighed hugely and looked at the lodging house before them. "Did you see him around a lot?"

"A couple times," he said. "Maybe four or five times."

"But you haven't seen him in three or four weeks, you said?"

"Nope," the boy said. "What's this guy to you, anyway?"

"He's my friend."

"Well, as I understand it," the boy said with an air of certainty, "friendships on the road are ephemeral."

"He's more than a friend," Kyle retorted.

"Oh?"

Uh oh! Quick, think of something! "Well _you_ were catching out with that older colored man!"

The boy jerked back. "What does _that_ have to do with anything?"

"I'm just saying," Kyle began, but then he realized he had no idea what he was saying. "How old are you, anyway? You look like you're thirteen."

"I'm twenty," the boy spat.

"What! No you're not."

"You wanna see my birth certificate?"

"Yeah!"

"Well too bad," he said. "Now get out of my sight, you coke fiend."

"Okay, first of all, I'm not a coke fiend – I have a doctor's prescription for this. Second of all, I don't understand why you're so mad? Look, I'm sorry if I said something that made you mad. Please don't be mad. I'm just trying to find my friend. I really need to find him."

Not very nicely, the boy said, "Well I told you I haven't seen him lately."

"Okay, but if you do see him, will you let me know?"

The boy snorted and said, "How?"

"Give me a call? Please? You're my only hope," Kyle pleaded. "Here, I'll give you some money." He attempted to dig a dime out from his wallet without taking it out of his pocket.

"I don't need your money," the boy said. "Maybe I'll give you a call if I see him. Maybe."

"Would you? Oh, God, I'd be so grateful – you have no idea. My phone number is Lake View 3679. Can you remember that? Do you have a pen and paper?"

"No. I don't." Then the boy groaned and rolled his eyes. "What did you say it was? Lake View 3369?"

"No, no, 3679," Kyle corrected him, emphasizing the seven. "You can remember it because the first two digits add up to the last one."

"Okay."

"Just say you want to speak to Kyle."

"Alright."

Then Kyle asked, "What's your name, by the way, just so I know? Or your nickname, I mean – you don't have to tell me your real name, of course, even though Kyle is _my_ real name, not my nickname – that would be Handle, because I have such a great handle on things!"

The boy raised an eyebrow and said, "Berg."

"What, like a town?"

"No, like the name."

"Oh, right, right," Kyle said. "Of course."

Just then, the Negro man from before showed up. (So much for ephemerality!) "Hey, it's that kid from Pittsburgh," he said.

Berg suddenly stood up straight. "Hi," he said to the man, his voice shifting almost awkwardly.

"Yep, it's me," Kyle said. "I was just asking Berg here if he'd seen my friend."

"And has he?" the Negro man asked.

"I'll tell you about it later," Berg said, taking the Negro man's arm. "Let's get outta here."

"Uh, okay," the man said. And then they left.

Kyle thought it was very rude of them to just leave him here. They didn't even say goodbye, which sort of hurt his feelings, to be honest. He looked up and down the street, becoming even more depressed when he saw just how filthy it was around here: the street was littered with discarded cans, paper, and glass; the corner infested with peddlers; the whole place seething with vice. It was bad.

Was Stan still here? Kyle wondered if it was sheer happenstance that Berg hadn't seen him lately, or if Stan had actually left and gone elsewhere. If the latter were true, it would mean that Stan wanted to get as far away from Kyle as possible.

Gloom firmly settled in. But then the drug store on the corner offered a tiny ray of hope.

"I need Birney's Catarrh Cure," Kyle told the druggist, not caring that this was basically an admission.

He paid a quarter for the catarrh cure and left, relieved by how easy that was. Then he crossed the street to another closed employment agency and, hiding inside its entranceway, took the bottle and tube out of the box. After stashing the tube in his pocket, he threw the box away, got his dollar bill out, and awkwardly rolled it up while still holding the little blue bottle. Then he uncorked the bottle and sucked its contents up his nose. However, this proved unfeasible once the powder was half gone, since the dollar bill wasn't long enough. Angling the bottle worked somewhat, at first, but then there was still some powder at the bottom that he couldn't reach. Getting anxious now, he got the tube back out and stuck one end in his nose and the other in the bottle. Then he inhaled the remaining powder as forcefully as possible. While this wasn't how you were supposed to do it, it worked perfectly.

This was representative, wasn't it? Sitting around the main stem, having just publicly snorted catarrh powder, feeling like death: this was what his life was now: trash. And he was trash, too. He thought about drowning in Bubbly Creek and archaeologists finding his greasy, calcified mummy a thousand years from now. _"Human male, 18-22 years old, preserved in various animal fats,"_ his museum placard would read. People would come and go all day, gawking at his nasty, boogery corpse, as if he were some kind of sideshow exhibit, which wasn't entirely false.

It seemed like it was taking a long time for this catarrh cure to work. He picked the box up off the ground and looked at the ingredients: magnesia, menthol, peppermint leaves… but no cocaine? What? Was it just not written on the box, or did it really not have any? No, no, there had to be coke in here – everybody knew Birney's Catarrh Cure had cocaine in it.

But it definitely wasn't working. God, did those fucking Hull House crusaders get to catarrh cures, too? He bet they did. Damn them. Why couldn't they just knock it off and let people have their fun? Fucking Hull House.

This was it, this was the end, this was hell. The future scientists would study his corpse and find out he was an invert, and then they'd put that on the placard, too, and then everybody would know, and Jesus, he had just told that Berg asshole that Stan was handsome, on top of all that other stupid bullshit. God, he was such an idiot, such a fucking idiot.

All he wanted to do now was go home.

His mother pounced on him before he was halfway through the door: "Why didn't you tell me you were going to the library?"

"What? Oh. Because I only remembered about this event there after you left." He moved past her, heading to the kitchen.

She followed him, of course. "I don't think it's too much to ask of you to tell me your plans."

" _I told you_ I forgot about this thing until after you left. And I left a note, so don't act like I just disappeared," he said as he got himself a glass, never in the mood for this shit, let alone when he was coming down from cocaine.

"Don't be so forgetful then," she said, then added, "Wait a minute – we talked about you getting out of the house right before I left! How did that not spark your memory?"

He stared her down as he drank the full glass of water, which gave him the opportunity to come up with something good: "Do you remember how you forgot to pack underwear that time we went to New York, and you had to buy all new underwear? And how neither of us were mean to you about it?"

"That's different!" she shot back, hopefully embarrassed.

"It's really not. People forget things," he said coolly. "Please, just give me a break. I'm exhausted."

She crossed her arms over her chest and said, "Just remember next time."

While refilling the glass, he rolled his eyes. "Fine."

Maybe when he was thirty she'd lay off him.

Probably not.

* * *

College, way up in January, was what dragged Kyle through the rest of December. He went shopping, twice, for new school clothes; he bought pens and pencils and notebooks. He brushed up on his physiology; he sent away for a copy of _Principles of Psychology_. He figured out his new class schedule; he imagined himself as a sleek upperclassman en route to History of German Psychology. These things gave him little touches of happiness, or perhaps not so much happiness as the capacity to tolerate existence, to swallow another day without hearing from Berg, let alone Stan. And while Kyle's blood was still black with misery, pumping through his very broken heart, he was, in fact, relieved to be being dragged from this hole, this place where he had spent autumn in summer, where the present was the past. Now, the days and months ahead were uncovered, scrubbed of oblivion, and he was able to see himself in them, trudging from Sunday to Saturday and then Sunday again. These days would be laden with unfamiliarity, passed in red-roofed buildings he'd never gone inside and with people he'd never met, but the reason for which they were divided was of utmost familiarity: the pursuit of knowledge. As of right now, he considered himself very knowledgeable, far more so than other boys his age (Gregory had been a rare competitor), and he was only going to become more knowledgeable at college. Furthermore, he was very pleased to be pursuing a psychology degree, and while it was disappointing that he couldn't take Introductory Psychology until he had completed nine majors, he was at least paving the way by taking German this quarter. Plus, this also meant he had more time to learn about psychology on his own. He might even be able to get access to the departmental psychology books.

His mother was, of course, extremely pleased to see him doing all this stuff. _"That cocaine really worked!"_ he would tell her, and her face would instantly fall, which was extremely funny. For once, though, it was more or less peaceful at home, and even though his mother kept bugging him to go to temple, there hadn't been any big fights in a while, just the occasional spat over something little and stupid. Kyle felt calmer, and he bid adieu to 1913 with even resignation.

Now, at 5:30 a.m. on January 2nd, 1914, he looked at himself in his full-length mirror. For the first day of school, he was wearing all new clothes: a brown Kuppenheimer sack coat with matching trousers, a warm shade that his mother said looked lovely on him; a lighter, sand-colored waistcoat; gloves to match the waistcoat; a dress shirt, the collar stiff and prim; a navy blue necktie with thin white horizontal stripes; brown spat shoes; navy Interwoven socks; and under everything, new underwear. His hair – a frequent source of disdain – was as suitable as possible, short enough to be neat, but long enough that he didn't look like… well, like someone who wasn't him, that was for sure.

He went downstairs and fixed his own breakfast. It took him a while to locate the capers, but he finally found them hidden in the back of the icebox. As he ate, he heard his father walking around upstairs, getting ready for work. Once he was done eating, he went upstairs and bumped into him in the hallway.

"Oh, you're up already?" his father said.

"I've been up since five," Kyle replied. "I had trouble sleeping."

"Nervous?"

"I guess."

"You'll be fine," his father said, giving him a pat on the shoulder.

Kyle checked his briefcase one more time to make sure he had everything, and then he left for school. The sun had yet to rise, and it was very cold out. He walked to Diversey Station and waited for the Evanston-Jackson Park express, extremely glad that the El had recently been through-routed, meaning he could ride all the way to campus without having to get off and transfer in the Loop. His train soon arrived, and he boarded and paid, then sat down and looked out the window, his eyes gliding over the building tops as the train clicked over the tracks.

He wondered if he would make friends at college. He hoped to, sort of, yet at the same time, he had a very difficult time imagining himself being friends with a fellow student. Somehow, the idea of it seemed stupid, almost cheap. It hurt a lot when he remembered how meaningful everything had felt with Stan. When they entered the Loop, he looked down West Madison Street and felt numb.

He couldn't think about Stan now.

The sun was just rising when he got off at University Station. From here, it was a twenty minute walk to campus. He walked fast to stay warm, the wind whipping his face. Up ahead, beyond the bare trees, the castle-like buildings of the university spread out massively, and while he felt special and mature to finally be a student here, he also sort of wished this really were Oxford. He pretended it was as he walked down South Ellis Avenue.

His main concern this morning was matriculating and getting registered for classes before 8:15, when his German class started. He was now in the office of the Dean of Junior College, and it seemed to be taking forever. It was upsetting that all this had to be done on the first day of school – he hated that he was missing his first German class! To make matters worse, when he gave the secretary his list of classes, he was told that five majors was way too many courses to be taking – even just four required a sign-off from the university Medical Examiner. Kyle was upset about this, because he had planned to take Physiology 3 next quarter. But maybe five courses really was too much, so he crossed out Physiology 2, then told the secretary he would indeed get permission from the M.E. to take four majors, since that wasn't very much at all, especially considering one was a Physical Culture course. The last thing they gave him at the Dean's office was an emerald green academic cap.

"All freshman wear a green cap," the secretary told him, "that way, you can identify your fellow classmates."

"At special events, right?" Kyle asked to confirm.

"Oh, no, you wear it all the time."

"What? Is that a new rule or something?"

"It fosters a sense of belonging among the freshmen," the secretary said.

"Okay, but is it a rule?"

"Well, no, but it's not going to look good if you don't wear it."

Kyle wanted to argue and say it wasn't going to look good even if he did wear it, but instead, he took the thing and muttered, "I see."

He threw it away in the bathroom afterwards.

It was now eight forty-five, and he _still_ wasn't done: now he had to go to the Cashier to pay his fees. As he headed over to the Press Building, he saw a few students wearing those green caps and was disgusted. It was bad enough being the youngest at school, but they expected him to _advertise_ it to everybody? That was just cruel. And green, of all colors! He didn't wear green; he wasn't stupid.

By the time he was done at the Cashier, it was nine-thirty, making him fifteen minutes late for Rhetoric and English Composition, a mandatory class he did not want to be taking. It also had a woman teacher, which was a joke – Kyle didn't understand why they would have a woman teach a men's Junior College course. The University of Chicago was such a product of its environment. So he did not go to that class today. Instead, he went to file his supply and breakage ticket at the laboratory supply store. After that, he got some lunch in the men's dining hall, and then went to his first ever college class: Physiology of Blood, Respiration, Digestion, and Secretion, and Absorption. He felt very nervous as he headed over to the Physiology Building. He arrived fifteen minutes early, and thankfully, the professor was already there, so Kyle was able to explain that he was a new student and show him his matriculation and registration cards before anyone else arrived.

"Did they forget to issue you a green cap at the Dean's office?" Professor Lingle asked.

"Umm. Yes, they must have."

"Well, you'll have to go back to Cobb and get one," Professor Lingle said. "Anyway, welcome to the University of Chicago!"

* * *

Kyle liked college. His favorite class was German, and he often put more effort into it than any other class, taking great care to memorize the gender of words. He had his mother check over his homework for mistakes, but she never caught them all, which was upsetting, but admittedly understandable, since she had not studied or even used the language in over twenty years. She was useful for practicing conversation with, however.

His English class was boring but easy, as much as he didn't care for Miss Morgan, who was an old maid. Physiology was also easy, for he had a solid background in the material. His lab partner was a boy named Alexander who had gone to the University High School next door. Alexander was friendly, and Kyle enjoyed talking to him about random little things, but he only interacted with him during class. One time, he saw Alexander walking and laughing with a bunch of other boys, which made him feel ridiculous about himself.

Elementary Fencing Instruction was his last class of the day, beginning at four. He had never done fencing before, and it was as fun as it was refined. The class often went past four thirty, which was fine by Kyle. After fencing, he would go eat dinner in Hutchinson Commons. He always waited until at least six thirty to leave campus, because he didn't like riding a crowded train and getting jammed up in the Loop. On Fridays, he would leave immediately after Physiology and get home just as his parents were heading to temple. Then he would usually take a nap until dinner, though he didn't always fall asleep. It was exhausting, leaving the house at 6:30 a.m. and getting back at 7:30 p.m. Fortunately, at least, he was able to finish all his schoolwork while at school, so he didn't have to do any at home, but by the time he did get home, he was too worn out to do much, anyway.

He was grateful to be busy though – January had passed in a blink of an eye, and only today had he finally gotten around to inquiring about accessing the departmental psychology books.

"Are you in the Senior College?" the girl at the reference desk asked him.

"Uh, no."

She peered at him. "A graduate student?"

"I'm a freshman."

"Well, the Departmental Libraries are really only for advanced students," she told him.

Kyle felt like he'd been slapped. "I thought the point of a university was to encourage learning, not deter it."

She raised her eyebrows at that. "Listen, if you really want to access a Departmental Library as a Junior College student, you can try talking to the Adviser of that library. But I can't promise you he'll say yes."

"Alright. I'll do that."

"So which one did you want to access?"

"Psychology."

"Okay. That's in the Psychology Building, by the way, not here. The Adviser is Professor Angell. His office is in Cobb" – she paused to refer to something – "room 2A4."

"Alright. Thanks," he muttered.

This was complete bullshit – he had paid his tuition, so he should be able to read any book he wanted. Instead, he had to go beg this professor for permission. What was this, jail?

But as he was leaving the library for Cobb Lecture Hall, something occurred to him: if the Psychology Library was in a completely different building, then _Sexual Inversion_ couldn't have been wrongly shelved in the General Collection that time last year. So that meant the book actually _was_ part of the General Collection! He hurried over to the 100s to look for it. What he found was rather confusing: two books by Havelock Ellis: _Studies in the Psychology of Sex: Modesty, Sexual Periodicity, and Auto-Erotism_ and _Studies in the Psychology of Sex: Sexual Inversion_. What was this, a brand new book? Either way, it was about sexual inversion!

So now what? He certainly couldn't check this out under his name. But the library was for borrowing books, right? So did it really matter if you went through the process of checking a book out, so long as you brought it back? And surely nobody would even notice it was missing if he brought it back, say, tomorrow. So, after making sure no one was watching, he slipped the book under his coat and then went to the bathroom to put it in his briefcase. But as he was standing there in the locked stall, he couldn't resist opening it. As it turned out, this was the second edition of _Sexual Inversion_. He flipped through the pages, his mouth dry. Then, near the very end of the book, his heart stopped when he saw:

APPENDIX A.

HOMOSEXUALITY AMONG TRAMPS.

BY "JOSIAH FLYNT."

Had this been in the first edition? Had he somehow missed it? His fingers trembled as he turned the pages, his heartbeat so loud he could hear it in his head. At first it talked about prushuns and jockers – lambs and wolves – and then it mentioned "leg-work" and _immissio penis in anum_ , which immediately gave him an erection. But then it went on to detail the horrible abuses committed by old hobos against young kids, and then Ellis came in, supplying direct quotations from an English tramp correspondent, who said that _ninety to one hundred_ percent of tramps would engage in homosexuality if the opportunity arose, which was astounding if true. Then there were more depressing things, things Kyle believed but did not want to, and then someone came into the bathroom, which practically gave him a heart attack. Sweating and feeling like he might throw up, he listened to this person peeing, then put the book in his briefcase and left.

He walked outside in a haze. It was so bizarre, reading all that in a book. The jockers had given them a bad name, their predation apparently commonplace. So amongst hobos, it was either homosexual depravity or coincidence. While Kyle knew that he had been an exception, being a true invert who had actually fallen in love with a hobo, he still felt like he'd been exposed, his experiences on the road splayed across the front page of the _Chicago Tribune_ : sharing a bed in a flophouse, engaging in intercrural and anal sex. And here he was now, in the middle of the quad at the University of Chicago, engulfed by these gothic buildings, by lectures and laboratory work, standing centuries away from last summer, from tramp life, from the high price of freedom. To him, a university student, homosexuality amongst tramps should've been an oddity, a sad example of lower class depravity, yet it had in fact been everything, and he was ruined for having known it, damned now to the smart click of his spats down Ellis Hall and praise from Herr Gronow.

* * *

On the Tuesday after Valentine's Day, Kyle was coming home after a long day at school. He had stayed up too late last night and was exhausted now, worried he might drift off to the rapid _click click click_ of the train wheels and wake up in Evanston. Yet he somehow managed to hang onto the gray thread of consciousness as he traveled north. At Diversey, he got off and battled the wind up North Sheffield, his nose dripping. And then finally, his house came into view – Ithaca, at last.

"You got a letter – it's on the table there," his mother said from the parlor as he was putting his coat away.

His name and address had been written in pencil, and there was no return address. There were two stamps on the envelope. Who could this be from? Eric? In his room, he used his letter opener to open the envelope and took out the pages of notebook paper:

_Dear Kyle,_

_I've started up so many letters to you that I ended up tossing out that I told myself I was going to send this one no matter what. I don't think things will come out right this time, but they never do._

_Anyway I thought maybe there was a chance you went home so that's why I'm sending this letter to your house (I got your address from the directory here.) But if you really did catch out on your own like you said you would then to whoever's reading this, I'm sorry, but I don't know where Kyle is and I haven't seen him since September._

_If it is you, Kyle, then I guess I'll start out by saying that I've spent the past few months thinking about last summer and what happened in Pittsburgh and not being able to understand how the best thing that ever happened to me could fall apart so fast. I always tried to do right by you, but I guess you didn't like putting up with some of the things I have to deal with. And that's understandable. But you didn't have to be so mean to me. I was honestly kind of afraid of you then. It was like you hated me. Do you? I tell myself that can't be true but then I think back to that day and I honestly don't know. I guess maybe you were just mad about being in Pittsburgh and decided to take it out on me. I wish you hadn't done that, but I forgive you for it._

_I also wish you hadn't left, but I guess these things don't last forever. I just wish it had ended more amicably._

_Anyway, yes, I'm in Chicago, staying at the Beacon Hotel (1011 S. State St. Rm. #11.) I got a winter job as an ice-cutter that should last a while longer before I have to find more work. Anyway I hope you will send me a letter (if you want to) because I'd like to hear from you and at least know that you're doing alright. I don't know if you ended up going to college but I hope you did. I think you would do really well at college. You're the smartest person I know so I hope you were able to go._

_A lot of things happened since I got back in town and I haven't seen anybody in a while now, but I'm in a pretty good place now being on my own. I've been reading a lot of books (Marx and Lenin) and if I do go to the main stem, it's just to go to the Hobo College._

_Mostly I just want to know that you're okay. I'm not asking you for anything else, but I also wouldn't be opposed to meeting up at some point if you wanted to talk about things, so long as you aren't still mad at me._

_Sincerely,_

_S_


End file.
